Catanzani holds overnight TQ at GT Worlds
With the 3rd running of the IFMAR 1:8 GT World Championships taking place in Chile, it is Serpent’s Andrea Catanzani who leads the way after 4 rounds of qualifying to hold the overnight TQ in Santiago. A driver who came to international prominence at the previous GT Worlds two years ago in Sydney, Australia, after a stressful start to the Day 1 of qualifying when he was briefly disqualified from Q1 this morning, the Italian has since taken charge of proceedings. With a TQ run in Q2, he backed that up with another two TQ runs in rounds 3 & 4 of six although he admitted that Q1 winner Alessio Mazzeo had found something on his Raptor set-up. He also felt his rival would have most like have TQ’d had it not been for another car spinning in of him and resulting in unavoidable contact and 2-seconds lost. The gap at the end of the 7-minutes only just 6/10ths of a second with Natanaele Senesi completing the Top 3 behind Mazzeo. Venezuela’s Diego Morganti capped off his day with his best showing yet to post the 4th fastest time, the best performance we seen so far from any non-Italian driver.
Summing up Q4 with ‘it was OK’, Catanzani added, ‘it was maybe not so fast because Alessio was super fast. I think he was a little bit quicker that one but touched with someone else and that helped me get the TQ.’ He continued, ‘for sure tomorrow we will have a good battle for the overall TQ so this evening we will think about what to change to get a little bit more speed.’ Asked how his car was for the last run, the new crowned Italian National Champion said, ‘It was better, more consistent, and more easy to drive but also faster but we still have to make it a little bit more fast.’
‘Super bad luck because I think our pace was fast enough to TQ that one’, was Mazzeo’s reaction after Q4. He continued, ‘(Elias) Flavio was angry with himself but it’s no problem because it was not his fault, it just was windy and no grip the first laps so it’s something that can happen’ – the Brazil racer spinning in front of and being collected by Mazzeo’s car. He added, ‘Flavio is a super nice guy, I have zero problems with him but obviously I was angry because we deserved to take the TQ for a second time today but congrats to Andrea.’ Asked if he had found something to give him the new found speed, his fastest lap of Q4 the fastest lap of the day, he replied, ‘yes we found something’ but he wasn’t going into any more details other than to say it wasn’t a big change but it ‘made a big difference.’ Still in the hunt for the overall TQ, but needing to take both remaining rounds, the 33-year-old said, ‘we are confident for tomorrow and we will try to do our best. The TQ is still open so it’s still on but it would have been better to have two rounds each. Andrea is super fast and they work really well so they deserve to be in this place.’
Asked how his final qualifying attempt of the day was, Senesi replied, ‘It wasn’t bad actually. It is always difficult to match the pace of the first two guys because they are super fast so right now for me and I think the others the race is to be in the Top 4. I’m pretty happy we made another P3 so overnight we are P4 but I think for sure tomorrow we can show another good run.’ On his car, the Senesi Motorsport S21GT based on an Xray with his own sell engineer conversion kit, the former Italian and European Champion said, ‘it seems the car is working very good with used tyres so I am happy about that and overall it feels good to drive.’
‘Very very good’, that was how Morganti summed up his P4 run. With this marking his first IFMAR World Championships, the son of well known nitro onroad racer and IGT8 owner Paolo Morganti said while the focus has been on making run time that was ‘definitely the best run of the day.’ Running out of fuel right before the finish line in the previous round, he said overall its been a pretty consistent day for him and he is feeling confident he can improve on some of his earlier runs tomorrow. Rounding out his 20th year here at these World Championships, Monday being his 21st birthday, this is his second time to the CACH track which he described as ‘awesome’.
Holding third in the overnight rankings, 2023 Top Qualifier Alex D’Angelo would suffer problems in the last round of the day. The Capricorn driver, having enjoyed his best run in Q3, suffered an issue with a driveshaft in the warm-up and missed the start but wanting to check the changes he made to the car they fixed it to get him back on track but he said he couldn’t properly feel the effects of the changes because the issue resurfaced again leading the Italian to call Q4 a ‘failure’.