Two cars in the 1st two rows in Brands Hatch

2010. július 16. 18:20 | még nem szólt hozzá senki.  szerző: Viktor Adorján

After the promising results on Free Practice 2, Zengő-Dension Team's Duarte Félix da Costa and Gábor Wéber claimed 2nd and 4th positions on the grid for tomorrow's first SEAT Leon EuroCup race in Brands Hatch. Imre Birizdó made a progress and ended up 13th, Andrea Larini was 16th.

Following the Free Practice 2 the car was close to its optimal state said Gábor Wéber while he was busy with analyzing the sector times from the practice instead having his launch in the SEAT Leon EuroCup base of the Zengő-Dension Team.

The only problem was that the car setup was fitted for used tyres remaining from Zolder and it was still unknown how would the car work when the new set of tyres got installed over the course of the session. Finding the reference was even more difficult than usual as Wéber was forced to use new tyres on the rear axle as a result of his puncture earlier and this altered the balance of his car.

It is not a surprise then that Wéber was eager to find out what to do with his car ahead of the qualifying and brought up the question to Norbert Michelisz and his race engineer Arnau Niubó during having their lunch. The Hungarian driver then started the qualification in traffic and spent the early part of the session down in the order.

Rain was threatening the qualification but eventually the circuit remained dry for the 30 minutes session that saw Duarte Félix da Costa taking the provisional pole position with a 1:35.194 but even this lap wasn't enough for the pole position as Daniel Welch put in a time that was 0.055 seconds faster than the Portuguese driver's best effort.

Photos from the qualification

First row for the first time in 2010

Apart from the fact that da Costa couldn't take pole for Brands Hatch it should be noted that following two third places on the grid of Monza and Zolder, this second position is the best result for him to date as a driver for Zengő-Dension Team.

Da Costa has often been a victim of unavoidable racing incidents or costly mistakes that resulted serious penalties and the main task will be to get out of the way of the bad luck that follows him. This won't be easy as starting from the outside of the grid is much more dangerous here than on most of the circuits.

This is a cause of a concern for Gábor Wéber as well. The leader of the classification is reported to feel heavy vibration from the front of the car, this is something that also noticed by Norbert Kiss in Portimao who drove exactly the same car two weeks ago.

Wéber returned into the pits three times over the course of the session, he asked his mechanics to make changes on his car but in the end he couldn't perform as well as he would have liked even though he is only 0.226 seconds slower than pole sitter Daniel Welch.

What is the most important from his point of view is that main title rival Michael Rossi is still behind him on the grid as the French driver took seventh behind Eoin Murray and Laurenco Beirao Da Veiga. Tonight the team is going to review Wéber's car in a bid to find the cause of the problem and the possible solution.

Birizdó makes spectacular progress

One of the positive surprises of the session was Imre Birizdó's performance. The young karting talent and rookie of the series successfully broke under the magic 1 second gap and finished 13th with a lap that was 0.858 seconds slower than the fastest one of the session.

The young Hungarian racer successfully outpaced quite experienced opponents including Zolder Race 1 winner Tim Coronel (14th) and team mate Andrea Larini who is having a difficult weekend so far and finished only 16th on the grid.

Plenty of work is remaining for the evening before the first race that takes place tomorrow but the team have a reasonably comfortable timeframe to solve the issues that popped up between the very good looking practice sessions and the less than optimal qualifying session.

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