On the second day of the San Marino Grand Prix, Ryusei Yamanaka takes 16th place in the second qualifying session. Filip Salac starts the race from P26.
Saturday at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli started for the riders of the CarXpert PrüstelGP team with dry conditions and around 23°C air temperature. Both riders were motivated after yesterday’s practice day and confident to make it to Q2 through the third free practice session and thus create a good starting position for tomorrow’s race. However, two incidents in the third free practice session in the morning led both times to a red flag and thus to a longer break – this reduced the riding time for all drivers considerably. Both Salac and Yamanaka were not able to implement their training and qualifying strategy as desired. Both had to go through Q1, hoping to qualify for Q2 with a fast lap as well. While Yamanaka finished in 4th place and was thus allowed to ride in Q2, Filip Salac’s fastest lap was cancelled by race direction because of exceeding track limits – the Czech will thus have to start tomorrow’s race from 26th place. Yamanaka will start from P16 and thus from the sixth row.
Ryusei Yamanaka (P16 | 1’43.021):
“This weekend we are trying to go for a completely different strategy. I was riding more on my own today, especially in Q1, instead of hanging on too much to a group or another rider. The strategy seems to work, I finally made it to Q2, which makes me very happy. I still have some problems with the front, I can’t really build up the confidence yet. We will definitely work on that – but I am already very happy that we made it into the second qualifying. I’m looking forward to tomorrow!”
Filip Salac (P26 | 1’44.488):
“That was probably our most difficult day of the season so far with quite a lot of bad luck. In the morning I did a 1:42.9 with 15 laps old tires. Then I wanted to go out again with new tires to do a fast lap, which should bring me directly into Q2. Unfortunately, this was no longer possible due to the two red flag-interruptions. So I had to go through Q1 – and there my fastest lap was cancelled. Now I will start from 26th place, which of course makes my starting position in the race extremely difficult. Either way, though, I’ll give everything tomorrow and try to focus not on today’s result but on tomorrow’s race day.”
Pictures by © [2021] RLekl
