Enrique Ruiz has taken his fourth pole position from five races in qualifying for the 2020 British V-Prix, once again beating team mate Adrien Simon by a minuscule amount. It marks the fourth front row lockout for the team this season while they also put the largest gap of the season between themselves and their nearest rival - which was Downton's Klaas van Snelheid despite a late moment - at just over quarter of a second. Q1For the second time this season, a team featuring in Q1 missed the strategy deadline and were therefore immediately eliminated. As per usual practice however, the team - AMR - were still permitted to take part in the session, and duly showed their car had improved, as Finn Schnyder topped the group by nearly a tenth of a second. It was in vain however, and therefore left Nikolai Milkovich to officially take the top spot from Puccio Giodano, just 0.012 splitting the pair. The second Cheema of Tumo Kinnumen was just 0.053 further back - however had it not been for the AMR exclusion the Finn would have failed to qualify, as fourth fastest actually went the way of Dmytro Kovalenko, the Ukrainian just over a tenth slower than his team mate. This opened the door for Karl Beckenbauer to walk through into Q2 - despite only being sixth quickest in the session - and meant neither Arrow or AMR qualified, and consigned them to another Q1 battle next time out in France. For Arrow, it was a vicious bump back down to earth - the German teams two cars ending the session nearly three tenths shy of anyone else having qualified with Yakumi Takahashi in the last two races. See below for full Q1 classification: Q2Both Cheema and Westwood seemed to a different idea about the track conditions to the teams who had not already run - as both outfits sent their cars out as soon as the track went green. With no competition Tumo Kinnumen took provision pole, but his time was smashed by Puccio Giodano - the Italian lapping some nine tenths quicker with a time that would have put him fourth in practice. As the other teams filtered onto the track a more normal order started to take place. Mathershaw Porsche looked more imperious than normal and immediately shot to the top of the times - despite two somewhat steady looking laps - while FIRST surprisingly slotted into third and fourth, displacing the local Downton team to the dismay of large portions of the crowd. As the session lulled in the middle however Giodano ran again. The Italian - having now slipped but only to eleventh - improved again and jumped up to seventh, with a lap that brought whoops and cheers from the Westwood garage and the pink and blue sections of the grandstands. Their joy was short lived however, as mere seconds later the session saw it's first of three quick-fire red flags; with the cameras cutting to Karl Beckenbauer in barriers at Stowe. Once the session restarted, it took just 25 seconds before another red flag, as Kiara Thunder - running at Franklin in place of Enzo Domenicalli this weekend - locked up and beached herself in the gravel on the outside of Village. She wasn't alone in finding the colder-than-expected conditions tricky however; as Allar Kangur, Will Hoskins and then Marcus Thunder all made errors in Maggotts-Becketts complex, with the final mistake seeing the Lucas beached in the gravel and bringing about the third red flag. As the session got underway again with just 7 minutes remaining van Snelheid jumped the FIRST duo to move into third, while Johan Halvosen displaced Nathaniel Powers for sixth. The local driver was on course to improve and join his team mate on the second row in the dying moments - but an error from Klaas at Stowe on his final lap while pushing to get in amongst the Mathershaw Porsche's saw him just tag the barrier and bring out the yellow flags, spoiling his team mates final run and resigning him to a start on row four alongside the standout Giodano. Behind them; James Vasquez and Gabriele Garcia completed the top ten while Elroy Wagner and Hunter Ryan both just missed out - the duo separated by a thousandth of a second and shared disappointment equally as close. Allar Kangur was left scratching his head over fifteenth while Nick Addison impressed again for Franklin in nineteenth; but towards the back Giani Ledesma failed to repeat his efforts from South Africa, and lines up last. See below for full Q2 classification and grid for the race:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|