By: Prema Powerteam
July 31 2016
The second day of action at Spa-Francorchamps, home of the seventh round of the FIA F.3 European Championship, was once again double-faced for the Prema team. At the famed Belgian venue, the Italian squad was extremely fast in the rain, but struggling in dry conditions.
In the wet opening race, race control decided to begin the race behind the safety car. Then Lance Stroll and Maximilian Gunther took full advantage of their front row starting positions to stay 1-2 until the chequered flag fell. Nick Cassidy scored a positive fourth place, with Ralf Aron finishing eighth.
The second race proved much more complicated, with Gunther scoring a seventh place and ending up as the only Prema representative in the points zone.
# 1 - Lance Stroll
“A fantastic victory this morning. In wet we’re the quickest with big margin, while in the dry the team is struggling massively this week-end, I don’t know why exactly. Anyway, we lost our chance when I was hit at the start and had a puncture”.
# 2 - Nick Cassidy
“The morning race was good, I had a nice start and fought for third place, although unfortunately I missed out. There was too much water, and even if you were faster, it was difficult to do anything. Good points anyway, even if this afternoon was difficult to find a good pace. All the team struggled but we’ll work hard all together to solve out the issue”.
# 16 - Ralf Aron
“In the rain it was really hard to overtake and stay close because of the visibility, which was really zero. I was just praying nobody was on the road. In the dry, something is wrong and we need to sort it out because the pace is horrible for all cars, and this is not the place we should be. We will work hard tonight for tomorrow”.
# 17 - Maximilian Gunther
“Just like Lance, I reckon that the safety car could have come in earlier, but when there are any doubts, it is better that the safety car stays out too long rather than too briefly. All in all, my race was good, I made no mistakes and I am happy with my podium finish and the points I have scored. In race 2 I had a really good start fighting for 4th place. I was happy with that but then immediately I had a similar feeling to yesterday. We aren’t where we used to be. I struggled massively for most of the race, but we need to keep head up and analyse what happened. We improved from yesterday, but we’re still far away”.