Paloschi denies Hamon in penultimate seeding round
An impressive run in the third & penultimate round of seeding practice by Serpent’s Gabriele Paloschi has denied team-mate Jeff Hamon from securing an early top seed status at the 1:8 GT World Championship in Australia this evening. Running a heat earlier than the championship’s title favourites, Paloschi’s impressive time went pretty much unnoticed as Hamon went on to top the final heat of the round from Toni Gruber, which the Aussie and almost everyone else thought had secured him the top seed spot for qualifying. Running his three laps in 55.844, European Championship podium finisher Paloschi had ran his in 55.821. With the second round of seeding a repeat of the opening run, Hamon from Andrea Catanzani and Xray’s Natanaele Senesi, Paloschi topping the third round moves him up to third in Serpent lockout of the top 3 going into the final seeding run in the morning.
Having opened seeding with a P9 and followed that up with a P6, Paloschi was somewhat surprised with his zero points haul for round three. Running an identical Gimar/Serpent chassis and engine combo to both Hamon and Catanzani, the 20-year-old said, ‘that time the car was really nice. It was difficult in the first round but step by step we improve it and in the cold conditions of the last one it was really good. We see tomorrow how the car is in hot conditions.’ Asked about his pace over a full run rather than just 3-laps, he replied, ‘I am not known as the guy for the fast laps but over 7-minutes I feel comfortable.’
Asked about his run Hamon joked, ‘It was good until I found out I’m not top seed’. He continued, ‘No it’s fine, he’s my team-mate so it’s all good’. Having run the previous seeding round with a mission of warm-up, 3-laps, and done, the Worlds Warm-up Race winner said, ‘that was a long run simulation which was positive and I think we are in a good position going into tomorrow’. Asked if run time was a concern, he said, ‘It’s borderline for a lot of people and especially when its hotter out. There are going to be a lot of people driving to a number rather than flat out’.
Another driver using the cooler conditions to check his status over 7-minute was Gruber who holds P5 in the over night seeding behind Senesi. The European 1:10 Nitro Touring Car Champion explained, ‘we changed the manifold for that one to work on our 7-minute run time but it took a lot of work to get the engine set. I pitted maybe 5 or 6 times and it was still too rich which that meant the gearbox shifted too late. In the end it was OK, not perfect but still good.’ With Hong Nor’s owners and engineer arriving trackside in Sydney today, the German is confident ‘all is working well’ admitting ‘we are not faster than Jeff at the moment’ but also highlighting ‘he saved a lot with tyres in the first two rounds so for sure had better tyres for the last one but we are on a good way now and we see tomorrow how everything is.’
Rounding out the 6 in seeding with one run to go, Paolo Morganti is finding himself doing a lot of head scratching in terms of how to make set-up changes to his IGT8 chassis. Ending the day as he opened it with another fourth fastest time, he described track conditions as ‘Disney on Ice’. Making a front sway bar change after the first round he said the small change dramatically changed the car for the worse but then making a major change for the last run it made little or no difference. For tomorrow, he plans to revert to the best of the set-ups he ran yesterday in controlled practice.