It was warm and sunny today with air and track temperatures of 27° and 41° degrees respectively at the Yas Marina circuit, Abu Dhabi for the Friday morning Free Practice of the eleventh and final round of the 2017 FIA Formula Two Championship. Pirelli are supplying their P Zero Yellow soft compound and Red supersoft compound tyres for the weekend and the Racing Engineering drivers, Nyck De Vries and Gustav Malja, were using the soft compound for the forty-five minute session.
Nyck was immediately setting fast times and he went 3rd with a time of 1:50.550 on his first quick lap which he then improved to 1:49.211 to move up to second and Gustav was also going well, and his first fast lap was a 1:51.806 which he quickly improved to 1:50.536 to lie 9th. With just over fifteen minutes of the session gone both cars returned to the pits for some set-up changes and both men were back on the track with eighteen minutes still to go. Gustav immediately improved to 1:49.874 for 10th before returning to the pits while Nyck concentrated on running laps to give the team data on tyre wear for tomorrow’s race.
The thirty-minute Qualifying session took place at 19:00 local time under the Yas Marina permanent floodlighting system and the air and track temperatures had fallen to 25° and 29° degrees respectively. Nyck and Gustav were now using the Red supersoft compound Pirelli tyres, but they deteriorated quickly on this surface and were generally only good for two flying laps making it critical that a driver did not to make any mistakes when pushing at the limit. Nyck quickly set a good lap time of 1:48.385 for fourth and Gustav went tenth with a time of 1:49.294. Nyck set a personal best on the opening sector of his next lying lap but traffic on the final sector meant he was unable to improve his time.
After fourteen minutes both Racing Engineering drivers returned to the pits for a new set of Pirelli supersoft tyres, returning to the track with seven minutes of the session left. Nyck was really flying on his new tyres and he set a fantastic lap of 1:47.387 to move up to second fastest and Gustav improved to 1:48.671 in the dying minutes of the session. Tomorrow’s Feature Race will see Nyck starting on the front row of the grid and he will be determined to give Racing Engineering their first win of the season while for Gustav, who will start 18th, it will be a case of trying to gain as many places as possible to obtain a good grid position for Sunday’s race. |