Gruber TQ’s opening qualifier at GT Worlds
Having laid down his intentions with the fastest time in this morning’s final practice, Hong Nor’s Toni Gruber delivered a TQ run in the opening round of qualifying at the 1:8 GT World Championship in Sydney. Despite run time for the 7-minute qualifiers a concern for everyone, the early pace was blistering and drivers would later pay. Gruber pushed hard by Andrea Catanzani clearly managed the situation best as extra hot temperatures today added to the challenge and his work with engine tuner Daniele Ielasi clearly paying off. A whole host of drivers came to a halt in the dying moments as they ran dry, the first of them being defending World Champion Joern Neumann. Behind Gruber it would be Alex D’angelo who was second fastest as the Genius Racing team looked to have finally found their way. Team-mate Bernard-Alain Arnaldi also had a strong Q1 securing P4 behind Top Seed Jeff Hamon who would suffer his second brakes issue of the event.
‘Now we learn from the first round, the high temperatures meant the consumption was more, we have to adapt as a driver to make the 7-minutes’, was Gruber reaction to taking the opening qualifier. He continued, ‘ Catanzani was really fast. I was thinking to push more to stay with him or to keep to my own style and save fuel. He pushed too much and ran out of fuel. My speed was good when I drive smooth like this so I think the others need to do something to make 7-minutes but will loose speed. We are in a good position right now’.
D’angelo described his P2 as ‘not a bad start’ adding ‘it was a complete disaster yesterday’. The Italian said, ‘We made a lot of set-up changes. Our usual set-up is a lot different but today we find a good balance but it is still very tricky’. Used to running a tyre combination where the rear tyre is a softer compound to the front, he described the rules here of running the same compound PMT handout tyre all round is ‘challenging’ adding it makes the car tricky in the corners but they are finally finding a way to deal with this.
Asked about his opening attempt, Hamon said, ‘I lost a brake pad and lost all brakes. I dialled up my dual rate until I ran out. At that point I was going to pull out but I needed to see how run time was. It’s close but not as bad as others. Congrats to Toni.’ The Warm-up Race winner continued, ‘It is going to be tough at that pace, apart from Toni and what they are doing with Daniele, there is no chance (of making run time) at those lap times. And the temperature is going to be even higher tomorrow.’
Summing up his P4, European GT Champion Arnaldi said it was ‘better for sure’. The French driver continued, ‘I did a lot of work with my team-mate and we completely changed the car. It’s better but not perfect but we are on a good way. With some fine tuning I hope we can make it better.’ Like his rivals when asked about run time his body language indicated it was borderline.