Race Reports

Monza 07/09/2007

Monza Qualifying

Super Nova arrived in Italy for the ninth round of the GP2 Championship this week, at the historic, high-speed track in Monza located just on the outskirts of Milan.

The team had great expectations following this mornings’ un-timed practise, posting 2nd & 7th quickest times. However these front running positions were unfortunately not converted in the qualifying results, even though the pace was there from the start. Yet under the heat of the afternoon sun, the intense competition was plain to see with the first 14 cars covered in less than a second.  Luca will start tomorrows feature race in 7th position, with team mate Mike Conway 12th on the grid. But at one of the quickest most exciting circuits of the season, Super Nova are positive they can gain places tomorrow afternoon, when the races starts at 1600hrs. (Local time)

Team Principal David Sears “After Luca Filippi was 2nd & Mike Conway 7th in the un-timed, I genuinely believed they could be in the front rows for qualifying this afternoon. However qualifying was quite difficult, and Luca moved to 7th and Mike Conway 12th. Only 0.3 seconds would have made the difference to 3rd position for Luca, however the race will be slip stream special, as pole position sitter Giorgio showed last year, when he won from 8th position on the grid.”

Mike Conway “I’m disappointed with P12 really. I thought we would be in the top 6. The car was really nervous at the rear, it felt like the traction was out, so it was hard to keep high speed into the corners. We start mid-field tomorrow which is a bit of a danger zone, so it’s important to get a good start.  However this is a cool circuit, good for overtaking and I really think that we have a good race pace.”

Luca said of this afternoons qualifying “Having looked at the data, we could have been quickest in the session today, however I initially got stuck in traffic in the last corner & then I went wide onto the gravel on the very last lap, losing 2 tenths of a second. So in that sense we did not show our true potential today. However I am confident it will be a good race tomorrow from the first lap; I know what I need to do!”