FOURTH PLACE FOR FERRARI IN AUSTRIAN QUALIFYING
It was a positive Saturday for Matteo Ferrari at Spielberg, as the #11 topped the FP timesheets with a lap-time of 1’38.573secs which granted him the direct seed to Q2. A quick rain shower before qualifying shuffled the cards a bit: the track, however, dried up quickly, allowing Ferrari to log the fourth-quickest time. He will head row two tomorrow, ready to make amends for the lackluster results of the British GP.
Alessio Finello had a more complicated day as he was seventeenth in the combined times of today’s two Free Practice sessions. Forced to go through Q1, he found himself in tricky track conditions, as the asphalt still had some wet patches. This gave the Turin-born rider a hard time and resulted in a sixteenth place on the grid for tomorrow’s two races, ready for comeback.
4th – MATTEO FERRARI #11 (1’39.146)
“Generally speaking, it was a positive day, we went really well. Too bad for the track conditions in qualifying, where I chose to not take any risk. We could have done a bit better but P4 is still within the goal we had to qualifying in the first two rows. We have a good pace, we can do well: we’ll keep focused and try to bring home the best possible result.”
16th – ALESSIO FINELLO #72 (1’44.959)
“It was a complicated qualifying session: around one hour before the session it started raining, and it stopped moments before Q1. The track was neither dry nor wet: we chose to take to the track on slicks and it turned out to be the right choice, because it dried quickly and we managed to improve lap after lap. I was feeling good on the bike, but unfortunately I got the chequered flag before I could do one last lap, which maybe it would have helped us to start a little bit further up. We’re not giving up: there are two races tomorrow and I feel good on the bike, we’re competitive and I’ll do my best to show it.”
