Budapest – Qualifying

GP2 Series - Round 7
Budapest – Qualifying

Friday, 30th July, 2010

A tough qualifying session today saw the first twenty cars on the GP2 grid separated by just a second. Unfortunately both Super Nova drivers struggled to find clear laps and will line up 15th (Marcus Ericsson) and 20th (Luca Filippi). Marcus was optimistic going into qualifying after a strong practice showing but he only managed to find one clear lap, which wasn’t enough to challenge the top ten positions. Luca also had problems with traffic on the majority of his laps and, once he found some space, the tyres were past there best.

Tomorrows’ race will start 15:40hrs GMT

Marcus Ericsson - Car 6
Qualifying Classification: P15
“I am slightly confused after qualifying today, as the car felt pretty good and I felt that I extracted the most out of it, so I was very surprised to hear that I was in P15. Since the track is quite short it was also difficult to get a clear lap, which didn’t help to get into a rhythm. We need to analyse all of the data and work hard to find where this missing time is but tomorrow is another day and I will do my best to get into the points, although it is very difficult to overtake at this circuit.”

Luca Filippi - Car 5
Qualifying Classification: P20
“I am very frustrated with the position we are in. The traffic was terrible and i don’t think the other drivers were very helpful in moving out of the way for faster cars. Unfortunately when I did find a clear lap it was when the tyres had done five or six laps, so there just wasn’t enough grip to get the optimum lap time. ”

David Sears – Team Principal
“Having expected both cars to be in the top ten like last year at this track, we were hugely disappointed to see Marcus in P15 and Luca in P20. The traffic was really bad but that is no excuse because it was the same for everyone. In fact, Sam Bird was P18 until he got his only clear lap when he put his car on pole position!

We can only hope that we have some luck tomorrow for a change and improve from our lowly grid positions.