Race Reports

Spa 14/09/2007

Spa Qualifying

uper Nova International was on the pace today, setting the standard for the majority of the qualifying session here in Belgium this afternoon. The teams’ Italian driver, 22year old Luca Filippi held pole position, until the very last minute, when DAMs driver Nicolas Lapierre stole the top stop, by just 0.011seconds.

Team mate and British Formula 3 Champion, Mike Conway also looked likely to qualify in the top eight.  He was going for his best lap when unfortunately he got held up in traffic and made contact with Lucas Di Grassi, breaking the front wing. The damage was enough to bring Mike in, and in the remaining minutes of the session, Mike sadly had to watch his position slip from eighth to 12th for tomorrows Feature race.
This famous track is returning from a year out of the racing calendar, is one of the ‘favourites’ of the season. Tomorrow is expected to be thrilling as the penultimate meeting of the 2007 GP2 Championship, the race for championship winner gets closer.

Team Principal David Sears “After finishing 2nd in un-timed Luca Filippi really droved brilliantly to be P1 until the last lap, when he was piped by a surprise pole winner Nicolas Lapierre. Luca still lines up on the first row of the grid for tomorrows race. Mike Conway looked ready for a second row start, until he clipped the back of another car in the final corner, & ended up 12th. Mike however feels confident of a strong points finish in tomorrows race.
If both drivers finish in the points tomorrow, Super Nova hopes that this will consolidate the points in the team championship.”

Mike Conway “It’s a shame I couldn’t finish my lap….As I was coming into the corner I could see traffic ahead of me, but I had to finish the lap as it was my best so far. I overtook and in the second part of the chicane, I thought Di Grassi was going off, but he cut in, and we collided, causing too much damage to continue. We will make a few small adjustments for tomorrow, enough to be up there at the front.”

Luca said of this afternoons qualifying “I was leading for 28 minutes of the session today! On our first set my flying lap was great… when I came in to the pit lane, I said I don’t think we could improve much more! Later I got held up by a BCN car, which was a bit disappointing because the lap had been so good. But hey, P2 is a great result for today; and as we have shown, we were quick this morning, so there are many points to score this weekend. I hope to get a good start into the first corner, but I think it will be very close. ”