Mazzeo tops Q5 to remaining in the hunt

Raptor’s Alessio Mazzeo remains in the hunt for the overall TQ at the 1:8 GT World Championships in Chile, the Italian delivering his second TQ run in the fifth & penultimate round of qualifying this morning.  With fog delaying the start of Day 2 of qualifying at the Club de Aeromodelos de Chile track by an hour, once the action got underway the sun would come out in force.  While it was overnight TQ holder Andrea Catanzani who set the initial TQ pace for the first 6-laps, once Mazzeo’s tyres came in the 33-year-old took charge of proceedings.  With Catanzani’s Serpent losing pace in the later part of the run, setting the fastest lap Mazzeo would take the all important TQ by 1.6 seconds forcing the battle to become the Top Qualifier to go to the sixth & final round.  While always saying his car worked better in the hotter conditions unfortunately today noticeable increase in temperatures could hamper Mazzeo quest for the overall TQ honours as he needs another TQ run to match Catanzani but needs to do it in the fastest time to deny his fellow Italian the top spot.  Catanzani’s Q4 run from yesterday is the fastest so far and Mazzeo’s latest TQ run was some 4-seconds shy of the pace needed.  While all the attention was on the Mazzeo/Catanzani battle, behind them it would be Natanaele Senesi who completed the Top 3 after Alex D’Angelo’s Capricorn ran out of fuel on the last lap.

Pleased at having forced the TQ battle to go all the way, on his Q5 performance Mazzeo said, ‘The first laps the car was super loose because we started with new tyres and the track was cold so it was hard to remove the mold line off the tyres.  For 5-6 laps Andrea was in front because he start super fast but step by step I recovered the gap.  At the end I have a big gap so I take no risk to arrive at the end with a TQ.’  He continued, ‘now I need one more and the fastest one.  This will be hard because the perfect track was yesterday.  Yesterday I could do 7.08 but today that will be super hard but we have nothing to lose.  Andrea for sure will go also super fast like everytime so it will be a nice fight.  We are happy because we fight, we are at the level to fight for the final which is the most important thing but for sure we will try to claim the TQ.’

With Catanzani struggling to explain why he is experiencing the drop off in performance, summing up Q5 the 20-year-old said, ‘The start was good and we had a good advantage on Alessio but then the second part of the quali we lost it all but I don’t know why.  The car works well at the start but we have to understand why our lap times fall off after 3-4 minutes.’  Asked what the feeling of the car was like when it started to drop off the pace, the 2023 World Championship podium finisher said, ‘It’s like less steering and maybe also it loses a bit of power so we need to look at making changes for the last one to try and solve this.’

On his P3 run, Senesi said, ‘We made a few changes to the car just to see if super used tyres would work so we went with a thinner rear sway bar, super thin, and I think it gained a little bit more traction because we were on 5th run tyres and I was there with guys on new sets.  Alex was on new tyres and also the first two were on new tyres.’  He continued, ‘My benchmark now was Alex and I was there with him.  At the end I was able to finish the heat and he ran out of fuel so I got third place.’  For the final qualifier, the 2024 European Champion said they will first make a calculation that the are straight into the final in the first four ‘and then we are going to use the new set cause we still have one.  We are going to use it just to break it in so that if we have to change a tyre in the final then we have them already broken in.’  Drivers each had 3-sets of the Sweep controlled tyre for the event starting with controlled practice.  If a drivers end up doing two finals, so bumps from the Semi to the Main, they will then be allowed a fourth set.