Sunday, 20 May 2012 11:00

Jules Bianchi put himself back in the hunt with a storming drive to pole position in this afternoon's qualify session in Barcelona, taking full advantage of the track conditions by being the first man onto the circuit and taking the top spot early in the session, ahead of Giedo van der Garde and Sam Bird.

The Dutchman looked to have pole wrapped up on his second flying lap, but his French rival pipped him just seconds later with a lap of 1:30.369, a mere one tenth ahead of the men in P2 and P3, while their rivals struggled to match the times as the clock ticked down.

Fabio Leimer slowed his rivals down on the first flying lap as he crawled around the first sector before leaving the circuit at turn six, the unfortunate victim of some type of gremlin: Bianchi was on a good lap but had to back off after finding the resultant traffic, but his next trip around made up for lost time.

With so many cars on track at the same time there was little chance for improvement: Romain Grosjean looked to be close to setting the pace before pulling up in the final sector, and it wasn't long before most of the field were back in the pits, with Ocean Racing the only team to run an alternative plan, going out as they rivals came in.

Most of the field looked to be trying to hold on to a set of tyres, but when a couple of cars went out late in the session the floodgates opened and most of grid were forced back out. There was effectively no change in the order, however, as Charles Pic, Grosjean, Davide Valsecchi, Dani Clos, Marcus Ericsson, Stefano Coletti and Luca Filippi will line up behind the top three on the grid tomorrow. With 12 drivers within a second of pole, and tyres more critical than ever, the feature race promises more excitement than ever.

Sunday, 20 May 2012 11:00

Istanbul Park Circuit, Turkey

Sunday 08th May 2011

Davide Valsecchi; P16
Luiz Razia; P18

An eventful GP2 race in Istanbul today saw Team AirAsia struggle with tyre degradation. After a strong start from third on the grid Luiz Razia battled to keep position, unable to challenge he dropped back to finally complete the 23 lap race in eighteenth place.  Davide Valsecchi made up an impressive nine places in the early stages of the race but unfortunately his good fortune turned when he too began to suffer with the tyres mid race. The Italian eventually finished sixteenth. Now the team will review race strategy, with tyre preservation in mind ahead of round two in Barcelona in two weeks time.

Here is Team Manager Phill Spencer, Davide Valsecchi, Luiz Razia, and Chief Engineer Humphrey Corbett.

Team Manager Phill Spencer: “It has definitely been a lesson learned today. We started this morning very optimistic after a positive day yesterday, but in the end today’s results are very disappointing. Looking at the other teams’ performances, we must have done something wrong, so we need to rethink set up and strategy, go from there and move on ready for round two in Barcelona. ”

Davide Valsecchi (Best time 1:39.536/ P16): “The severity of the tyre condition surprised us somewhat today. Everything had been going well. We had a good start and gained a lot of places to move up to seventh place and I was thinking we could finish in the points, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case. We will need to work hard to solve this issue with the tyres, and focus on race performance ahead of Barcelona. I am confident we have a good qualifying car so we need to focus on the race, make sure we can save the tyres and hopefully fight for the podium in Barcelona.”

Luiz Razia (Best time 1:39.244 / P18): “It was early on in the race that I felt the car was not very consistent. I lost a place at the start and again mid race when Sam Bird passed me - this battle really worked the tyres and I just couldn’t keep him off. The period under the safety car also didn’t help our situation with the tyres, the drop off was really big so we will need to look through all the data thoroughly and see where we can improve. It’s not been a good day for us today, but on the plus side, we collected three points here yesterday and we know we have a good car for qualifying. We need to focus on race performance now and ready ourselves for Barcelona.”

Chief Engineer Humphrey Corbett: “We are still puzzled with today’s performances as we thought we had tyre usage covered, but it seems we have been caught unawares - lack of experience perhaps. We have shown we are up there and competitive in qualifying, but today has highlighted that we lack a little in the races. So for the future we will learn from this, change our strategy for Barcelona, and look ahead to the next race in a couple of weeks time.”

Next Race: Barcelona, Spain 20th – 22nd May 2011