Hamon top seed as Gruber fastest in final practice

Serpent’s Jeff Hamon is the top seed for qualifying at the 1:8 GT World Championship in Australia but it was Hong Nor’s Toni Gruber who concluded practice with the fastest time for the fourth round.  With drivers best two point scores from the four rounds to count, Hamon, having topped the opening two rounds, will carry the No.1 in the top heat of qualifying.  With yesterday very much a Serpent stronghold with Gabriele Paloschi topping the third run as the manufacturer held the Top 3 overnight in seeding, Gruber this morning put in a blistering run setting a time of 54.504.  While some opted for new tyres to bolster their points tally and get a better heat for qualifying, behind Gruber Genius Racing’s Alex D’angelo had a good run to the second fastest time ahead of Serpent’s Andrea Catanzani.  While Hamon tried a different set-up, that clearly didn’t work, reigning World Champion Joern Neumann managed a competitive run taking his Sworkz to the fourth fastest time to end up 8th in the final seeding.

Commenting on his performance, Gruber said, ‘Actually it felt really slow’.  The German continued, ‘while I was feeling it was going to be slow the lap times were fast.  When you have a car that is easy to drive but the lap times are fast this is really good.’  Running used tyres, he said, ‘Now we have new tyres (for qualifying) so we will see’.  Asked about fuel consumption, as the emphasis changes from 3-laps to counting the full 7-minutes for qualifying, he said, ‘we have to check after that run.  We were a little too rich in the beginning of the run but we changed the manifold for better consumption and the engine feels good but we have to see what was left in the tank’.

‘A terrible run’, was how Hamon summed up the final practice.  The Australian explained, ‘I made an adjustment to the engine, it did not work.  I made an adjustment to the car, it also didn’t work.  But it was worth trying’.  With tyres a big topic of the event, this morning’s team manager meeting seeing IFMAR agree to permitting a tyre stop in the Main final due to wear concerns, in relation to the final practice Hamon added, ‘some sneaky competitors used new tyres that one’.  Asked about his car for qualifying, he said, ‘I’ll just go back to my previous set-up, some of the others in the team also tried what I did and had the same results so we’ll just revert back’.

Finishing up as the third seed for qualifying ahead of team mate Paloschi, Catanzani was quick to point out his final run was on old tyres adding ‘maybe other guys were on new tyres.’  Very happy with his P3 run, the 18-year-old added, ‘my car now is good, it’s fast.  I think we are really fast for qualifying.’

‘Much better this morning, it was good’, was how Neumann described his run.  Also running in the GTe World Cup that is running alongside the GT World Championships here at the John Grant International Raceway, he said, ‘I tried something on the electric car and it was good so I copied it on to the nitro car and it improved it a lot’.  Asked what the changes were he said, ‘we copied the toe in and made a change with the front diff.’  On tyres the German confirmed he was used tyres following it up with ‘did some people run on new?’