BAKU - It was a tough day on-track for PERTAMINA PREMA Theodore Racing in qualifying for the FIA Formula 2 Championship at Baku.
On the Azerbaijani street Circuit, the team’s two drivers faced an extremely troubled session which featured plenty of yellow flags and was cut short by a red flag that hampered the runs of many of the series frontrunners.
While he had a top-5 potential, Dutchman Nyck De Vries was thus forced to settle for the fifth row and will be called to a good recovery in a track that gave so many satisfactions for Prema in the past.
The same goes for Indonesian racer Sean Gelael, who could not find the right chance to lay down a competitive lap especially with traffic in sector 2.
He already showed his passing and quick recovery skills in Bahrain though, when he bounced back from qualifying issues to score a brilliant 7th place. Race 1 at Baku will definitely be challenging with good chances for a real show.
Sean Gelael, #3
Qualifying: P17
Fastest Lap: 1:57.508
“I don’t like this word but I think we can use it today: unlucky. I mean, we prepared as hard as possible and the free practice was looking good for us, we were competitive throughout the sectors and we had a good balance, but some issues arose without us knowing.
In qualifying, we nearly didn’t do any good lap. If we see sector one and sector three, we were competitive, but we didn’t do any good second sector which made impossible to put together a good lap. It is what it is though, we already went from P19 to P7 in the points in Bahrain. Baku is a street circuit, it should be fun”.
Nyck De Vries, #4
Qualifying: P9
Fastest Lap: 1:55.728
“We started the day a little bit on a backfoot due to some issues in practice. Nevertheless, I think that the start of qualifying was OK. I wasn’t very happy with the balance, but I think we could have done better than we did.
After the first series of runs, with the second set, we couldn’t really manage to improve the balance, and I messed up in the last corner so I think we lost a big chunk of time there which would have put is in the top-5. On the other hand, we didn’t have the pace to battle for top-3 today.”
ACF
