Senesi takes Q4 at GT Worlds
Natanaele Senesi became the third different driver to TQ a round of qualifying at the 1:8 GT World Championship, the Xray driver topping the fourth round on a hot morning in Sydney where the temperatures on Day 2 of qualifying are set to hit 33 degrees. It was to be dramatic top heat that started with an early mistake from Q3 winner Andrea Catanzani, costing him over 2-seconds. Next it was Jeff Hamon who was in trouble, the Serpent driver have brake issues for a third time of the event and he was out after 3-minutes. Setting the fastest lap of the run as the only driver to run a 17-second lap, soon Catanzani was back in the hunt but he had Toni Gruber all over him, the Hong Nor driver having to lift on the straight so as not to run in the back of the Serpent. With Catanzani opening to allow Gruber passed, shortly after the German would all on his own go off the track and across the grass losing over a second. Catanzani looked like making it two TQ runs in a row but on the last lap he would run out of fuel with Senesi crossing the line to take it by 1.9-seconds from Gruber with the Genius pairing of Bernard-Alain Arnaldi and Alex D’angelo third & fourth ahead of Lachlan Donnelly who was running in the second fastest heat.
Overall Top Qualifier for the 1:8 GTe World Cup running alongside the World Championship, asked about his nitro TQ run, Senesi said, ‘I just tried to drive as safe as possible. I was on new tyres in the back and old on the front so my goal was Top 3 as another good score would put me in Super Pole’. He continued, ‘The hotter (the track) the better for me, it’s more grippy. The car was super good and I was on a good run. At the end I had lucky and could get the TQ.’
‘Just a stupid driver mistake, I can say no more’, was how Gruber summed up his moment during the qualifier. Not entiring happy with his car he added, ‘we had a leak in the diff yesterday so we refilled it but we over filled it and it got too hot which made the car difficult to drive but it was the mistake that cost me the TQ run’.
Another to suffer a mistake was Arnaldi. The French driver said his car was better but he had a spin that cost him 2-seconds. Describing his car as ‘good but not perfect’, he feels ‘it is not possible to push without making 360 degrees’. For the penultimate round he will ‘fine tune’ his set-up to try a get a better balance but he added this track is challenging for everyone.
D’angelo said, ‘I am happy with my qualifying because I was on all used tyres and I saw others were on new’. Before the start I told my mechanic that we just drive and take no risk and see at the end were we are, so fourth is a good position’. Looking to the final two qualifiers, the winner of this year’s Italian National GT Championship opener is feeling confident in the knowledge that he has two new sets of tyres at his disposal and hopes to capitalise on them and move himself up the qualifying ranking in which he currently sits 4th.