The Zele-Racing Team and Giacomo Ricci had promising first and second Free Practice sessions today, finishing both on a comfortable P4. Teams had to handle the push-to-pass function during these two sessions. Zele-Racing tried several small adjustments on the car and the main focus was to understand how to make the best use of the new Kumho tires.
Everything looked set for a good qualifying performance, but things did not go as expected. Ricci managed to bring the car home on P9 for tomorrow Race 1 despite suffering an engine coolant leak on the second half of his fastest lap.
Giacomo Ricci:“ I tried to push and felt pretty comfortable with the car, when i suddenly got the impression that the tires let go. I was not able to improve the laptime and the car became very difficult to handle. When we pitted to change for another set of tires we found that we have a problem with the engine and we had to stop.“
Michael Zele:“ We were quite confident to achieve a good result in qualifying, when we eventually discovered a leak on the car. At the end i have to say we were lucky to not loose and engine today. One of the hoseclamps broke due to vibration, which caused a leak in the cooling system. The engine coolant spray on the rear tires obvieousely caused some serious oversteer and we ended up down the order. However, our guys have fixed the problem and we´re looking forward to an interesting race tomorrow.“
