By: Prema Powerteam
July 29 2016
The Prema team experienced an up-and-down day today at Spa-Francorchamps. The Belgian venue, home of the seventh round of the FIA F.3 European Championship went from wet to dry weather, and after the practice session and qualifying 1 were held in rainy conditions, sunny skies were back for qualifying 2.
In the opening session, Lance Stroll scored a brilliant pole position. The young Canadian tamed some difficult track conditions to set a stunning flying lap, more than 1 second faster compared to his best competitor. Lining-up alongside him for race 1 will be team-mate Maximilian Gunther, who made it an all-Prema front row. Nick Cassidy also delivered a good result in fourth, while Ralf Aron rounded out the top-8 in a consistent performance.
As the drivers lined-up for session 2 though, everything changed dramatically. Gunther was the best Prema driver in eighth place, with Stroll 11th while Cassidy and Aron were even further down the order. The team’s technical staff is now fully-focused in investigating what led to such an incisive loss of pace.
# 1 - Lance Stroll
“It was pretty wet out there on track. However, intensity of the rain varied from one part of the circuit to another, which made things even more difficult for us as the drivers. However, I felt very confident and was able to put in my maximum performance straight away. I am very happy with pole position, but a lot of things can happen in the race tomorrow and we still to investigate about second session”.
# 2 - Nick Cassidy
“It was a bit disappointing in the wet because I felt the potential was really strong. All the team made a great job in that conditions with three cars at the top and this is very positive. About second qualifying was a bit difficult for me as I’ve never been here in Formua 3 without dry practice, but anyway seems we struggled more than most so we have to investigate but anything can happen here in races”.
# 16 - Ralf Aron
“We struggled a little bit with the balance as in free practice was really good. We kept the car the same. I think just the track changed and also my driving should have been a little bit better, while in Q2 we don’t really know what happened, the whole team was pretty slow.”
# 17 - Maximilian Gunther
“Has been pretty strange to drive the first time in Q2 on dry for us this week-end. We have to check what was wrong with the balance because it felt very strange. I’m P8, best Prema driver in second session by nothing. We have to analize, it was definitely a bad qualifying, no question, but we have to concentrate for tomorrow we have still good starting position from Qualifying 1, everything still possible with weather conditions, with track and many overtaking points it will be a very good race here”.
Canadians In BOLD