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.

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’.

Catanzani takes control in Q2 & 3

Serpent’s Andrea Catanzani has taken control of qualifying at the IFMAR 1:8 GT World Championships in Chile, the Italian producing back to back TQ runs as he topped the times in the second & third rounds of qualifying as things warm-up a little in Santiago.  With a cold start to qualifying this morning, the sun finally burned it’s way through the earlier fog with the snow capped mountain in the distance making up the back drop to the track as Q3 completed the first half qualifying.  Complaining of the cold after Q1, Catanzani would outpace Top Seed and Q1 winner Alessio Mazzeo by 1.1-seconds at the second time of asking, this time three drivers managing to put together 20-lap runs, the third of those being Capricorn’s Alex D’Angelo.  With Mazzeo having to pit during Q3 for an engine adjustment, D’Angelo would get a P2 for that round but Catazani’s advantage was now 2.2-seconds as he improved by almost 3-seconds over the 7-minutes despite feeling his car’s performance faded in the later part of the run.  Natanaele Senesi completed the Top 3 ahead of the WIRC of Brazilian nitro onroad racing stalwart Elias Flavio which overall means as it currently stands at the half way stage it is an all Italian line-up in the all important Top 4, direct to final, qualification rankings.

Changing his car after Q1, Catanzani said for Q2, ‘it was a little bit better, maybe more easy to drive, but still not perfect as it felt lose.’  Despite it not to his full liking the talented nitro onroad star still managed a TQ run and with the weather warming up together with a small set-up change he was confident for Q3.  However in the warm-up he said the car was even more lose than before causing him some concern but when the start of the timed 7-minutes came round the car was ‘really good’.  For the last 2-minutes of the run however the rear started to get lose and they are now considering a further change to end out the day.  Even if Catanzani can go three in a row, the overall TQ will remain up for grabs going into Day 2 of qualifying, with two more runs on the cards tomorrow along with lower finals.

Describing Q2 conditions as the same as Q1, Mazzeo explained, ‘Our car was super loose for Q2, but also in the middle of the quali I was unlucky when another car touched my body and it tucked and I drove all of the run like that.  Because of this I lose the change to fight with Andrea.’  On his third qualifying attempt he said, ‘now the track is warmer and my car was super nice, we made a small change to it for the run, but we had a small technical issue during the run when we were leading and we had to stop but the car was super.’  Quizzed about the issue, the Raptor/Gimar driver said his engine was too lean explaining this happened because it was much hotter for that round.  With Q4 wrapping up the first day of qualifying here at CACH, Mazzeo said, they ‘will do nothing to the car’ adding that the warmer it gets the better it suits his car.

Switching to a brand new set of tyres for Q2, his fifth run on the set he used for Q1 proving a little too much for the rubber, D’Angelo said his ‘pace was not bad’.  He continued, ‘my engine was a little too rich in the tuning so I had to manage it more and as a result I had less top speed and on the last lap the engine was shutting down but we managed to finish the round.’  Now with a fully broke in set of tyres for Q3, he would also make some small changes to his car, both for the hotter weather and also as part of the general quest to improve the car.  Leaning out his engine, he said it was better but still too rich, but this time he ‘could push the entire round and get P2.’  Overall the 2023 Worlds Top Qualifier said their biggest issue is still to make the car work in the first 2-minutes adding ‘the first 5-6 laps is were the gap to the top is, in the middle we are similar and at the end they have to manage fuel more and slow down.’   He concluded, ‘the focus is on the Top 4, to do the main final directly, and to work on the car to have a better situation in the main.’

Summing up his Q2 & 3 runs, on his P4 in the second qualifier Senesi said, ‘We changed to 60k oil in the diff for Q2 and while we thought it was better at first, towards the end we lost a little traction and the car out of the corner was not so fast as the first one even though the weather was a little better.’  Also taking into account how much the weather heated up for Q3, he would go back to 80K oil describing that combination with the hotter track as ‘way better’.  He would however suffer a different issue as midway through the run he overheated his tyres a little and with them ‘out of temperature’ he dropped off the pace.  Feeling this cost him 6/10th of a second and a potential P2, he said once they cooled down again he ‘was there again’ in terms of his rivals pace.  Looking to Q4,  the 1:8 GT specialist said the plan is to ‘run same car, same everything, and just try to manage tyres’, Q4 will be his fourth run on same set of the championship’s controlled Sweep tyres which he started out with in Q1.  With Top 4 his goal for qualifying, he said after that the 1-hour final becomes ‘a completely different game and you push in a different way.’