On Friday of the Catalan GP, Franco Morbidelli secures the Top10, while Fabio Di Giannantonio will go through Q1.
First day of hard work both on track and in the garage for the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya: Franco Morbidelli finishes Practice in seventh place and secures direct access to Q2, while Fabio Di Giannantonio struggles more and ends up seventeenth.
A steadily improving Friday for Morbidelli, whose contract renewal with the team for next year was officially announced just a few days ago. Franco improved his time attack from FP1 to Practice, and he could finish the crucial afternoon session in seventh position (1:38.511), securing a direct Q2 spot in qualifying.
Di Giannantonio struggled more on the first day of the Catalan Grand Prix, but he also improved his time attack compared to the first session. He was happy with his race pace, but the time he set in the Practice session (1:38.915) wasn’t enough for direct access to Q2, and Fabio will go through Q1 after finishing in seventeenth place.
The Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team is back on track on Saturday for qualifying, which begins at 10:50 a.m. (local time CET). The Sprint race will follow at 3:00 p.m. (local time). The Catalan Grand Prix will end on Sunday with the main race, that will start at 2 p.m. (local time).
FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO
“We started the weekend with some ideas, but we had to go back on them. We worked by returning to our reference points during the Practice session, where we had a good pace with the medium rear tyre. Unfortunately, we were unlucky in the first time attack due to traffic, and in the second one because of yellow flags. If you want to aim for victory, you need to be fast already from FP1. We’ll try to bounce back tomorrow, just like we did during the weekend in Hungary.”
FRANCO MORBIDELLI
“It was a positive Friday, because when you're directly into Q2 it means the result is good. We had to fight to reach this level of performance. We started quite far behind, I didn’t have a good feeling on the bike, but the team worked well and we managed to do two solid time attacks. Rear grip is the main issue on this track, so we’ll need to work on improving that. There’s more competition than usual here, so we’ll have to work well looking at the races.”
