The weather at Baku for the morning Practice session of the fourth round of the 2017 FIA Formula Two Championship continued the trend for this season with air and track temperatures of 26° and 45° respectively. Pirelli are supplying their P Zero White medium and P Zero Red supersoft compounds to the teams this weekend, the higher speeds than those found at Monaco requiring the medium rather than the soft compound used in the previous race. For Louis Delétraz this would be his first drive on the Baku Street Circuit whilst Gustav Malja had raced here last year, finishing in the points in the Saturday race.
The track was very dusty as the cars started practice which meant that times were initially slow and the first fast lap from Louis saw him 3rd on 1.58.504 with Gustav just behind in 7th with a time of 1:59.471 which he then improved to 1:57.815. The times soon began to fall but after fifteen minutes a Virtual Safety Car period saw most of the cars head to the pits for setup changes and as a car stopped on the track with mechanical problems the session was red flagged.
The cars returned to the track with fifteen minutes remaining meaning one third, fifteen minutes, of the session had been lost. After just five minutes Rowland spun and hit the barrier causing another Virtual Safety Car and there were just five minutes still to run after the DAMS car was removed. In the final minutes Gustav lowered his time to 1:55.416 and Louis to 1:56.570 but with all the interruptions to the session the times were not necessarily representative of the competitiveness of the cars.
The weather was similar for the thirty minute Qualifying session with air and track temperatures of 28° and 42° respectively and all the cars were now using the Pirelli P Zero Red supersoft compound in place of the P Zero White medium tyre that had been used in Practice. The disruptions to Practice would be especially hard for Louis as he tried to learn the track but on his first flying lap he went 2nd with a lap of 1:54.745 but the times were falling quickly but after ten minutes an accident to Ghiotto saw the red flag displayed. After three laps Gustav returned to the pits for Racing Engineering to check his car after hitting the wall at Turn 7 with his rear wheel causing quite a lot of damage but with the red flag giving the team more time to carry out any necessary repairs.
After a twelve-minute delay Qualifying resumed, following an aborted re-start, with the cars now fitted with new tyres and eighteen minutes still to go but three minutes later debris on the circuit saw another red flag. Qualifying quickly resumed now with fifteen minutes still to go and with Gustav’s car now able to return to the track although not all the damage had been repaired, his first quick lap was a 1:54.690 which the young Swede then improved to 1:54.286. Louis reduced his best lap a little to 1:54.688 but he was unable to improve further. At the end of the session Gustav finished in 14th place with Louis in 18th and both men will have to work hard in tomorrow’s Feature Race to make it into a point scoring position. |
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Team Comments:
Sebastien Viger, Technical Director: “A quite disappointing session. Gustav crashed on his first lap, so it was all about getting the car repaired. We changed some parts and he had the chance to give it another try. But there was still some damage to the car which prevented him from performing the lap he would have liked to. We were able to reduce the damage to start higher up the grid than last, but this is still not satisfying. In Louis’ case, it was not brilliant either. He suffered from traffic and was not able to deliver a lap before his actual last lap We are starting quite far back tomorrow, so it will be about having a good race, keeping out of trouble. We saw last year that staying on track was the key to scoring points.”
Louis Delétraz: “My first qualifying run was OK. On the second run, I was just incredibly unlucky again. Four laps and four times there were yellow or double yellow flags, so I had to abort the laps. It was always the car right in front of me that went off. So, I had no real push lap on my second set of tyres, which is really unlucky, because we should not be in P18, but I think in the top 10, if I could have had a decent lap, but starting from second last row. Again, we have to fight back tomorrow.”
Gustav Malja: “This was not the session, not the performance we wanted to have. I made a big mistake on my first push lap. I started to feel good and already in free practice I felt positive. We were not where we would have liked to be, but we felt the potential was there for qualifying. On my first push lap, I had a quite good first sector, the first two corners were not great, but I picked up a good rhythm and had a good feeling from the car. Then, unfortunately, I tried a bit too much in turn 7 and locked the front right, went into the wall and damaged the car. I made it back to the pits, we did what we could, but the damage was quite substantial and affected the car for the remainder of the session. It’s a shame as I obviously wanted more, but I am happy that we could finish 14th with such a lot of damage on the car. We know a lot can happen here at this track during the races, we just need to be smart and keep cool. We will for sure attack, trying to make up positions for race 1 and 2.” |
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