PFC Chapter 198
Chapter 198
Chapter 198
Stewart showed a very good state in the previous practice sessions. He won the fastest lap in the first two practice sessions. Due to the impact of rain in the third practice session, Stewart hid his true speed.In qualifying, as the weather turned fine, Stewart showed his strong speed again and ranked first in Q1. Although Daniel temporarily stole the limelight in Q2, Stewart’s performance in the last lap of Q3 shocked everyone. In this lap, he was almost 1 second faster than his previous result, and finally won the pole position with a huge advantage.Even the Ice City team was on the radio praising Stewart - it really was an amazing lap!
Stewart admitted after the race that he had almost reached his limit: "Given the success we have had over the past few years, fans may feel a little accustomed to this lap, but that is not the case. The battle for the last lap was very tight and I tried hard Let myself reach the limit of what I can achieve today, I am eager for perfection, and today's result is undoubtedly the best reward for us."
Stewart's time improved by nearly 1 second in the last lap. Some people believe that Bingcheng did not let the car enter extreme mode most of the time, but only released its trump card in the last lap. Stewart denied this: "I can Ensure that our car does not have a so-called extreme mode. The engine I used is in the same working state from Q2 to the end of Q3. There is no difference between everyone’s engines, and there are no extra buttons on my steering wheel to allow me to Cutting in for extra power. I was very focused throughout the race and I was waiting for the last lap to get the best out of the car.”
Compared with Stewart's scenery, his teammate Seaver seemed very unlucky. Q3 just started, and Seaver unexpectedly lost control at the second turn. His car first overwhelmed the grass next to him, and then slammed into the right side. The car was damaged so badly that the race director immediately raised a red flag.Fortunately, Seaver himself was not injured, and he could only finish in tenth place.
After the race, Seaver was naturally very disappointed with this result: "I want to say sorry to the team, this should have been a very good weekend, the feeling of the car has always been very good, but at that corner I appeared A few mistakes and then the car lost control and I thought we would have taken the front row today, but now we have only one car in the front, Stewart did a really good job and it's a pity that I made a mistake like that. "
After seeing Seaver's mistake, the team leader in the garage immediately hung his head in disappointment. In tomorrow's race, Stewart will face the joint attack of two Dongsheng drivers. Santak and Daniel ranked second and third respectively. Although the speed of Bingcheng's car is superior, it is definitely not an easy task to win the race.
Due to the reasons of his teammates, the test Stewart faced in the race was not easy. Seaver started too far back and could not provide much assistance to Stewart. Stewart will face the situation of fighting alone.And from the performance of the previous races, it can be seen that Dongsheng’s performance in the long distance has always been better than that of a single lap. If Santak and Daniel cooperate properly in the race, they will create a huge threat to Stewart. Daniel is not without Chance to defend the title in this race.
The performance of the Leysin team cannot be ignored. Tesrock's speed in qualifying is very close to that of Stewart and Daniel most of the time. His aggressive driving style is enough to make him a spoiler in the race.At the start of the main race, Tesrock will be the biggest uncertainty factor, and as the race progresses, if Stewart gets into a fight with the two Dongsheng drivers, Tesrock will also reach "the yellow bird behind". Opportunity.
In addition to the three major teams, Porter has proved his dark horse strength in qualifying. They also have the opportunity to hit the podium position in the race. Both Wesley and Gloria are very experienced drivers , Once an opportunity arises in the game, they will be able to seize it.Both of their drivers entered Q3, closely following behind the three major teams. Due to Vergil's penalty, Wesley and Gloria will start from fifth and sixth respectively in the race.After the race, Gloria expressed their confidence to continue this performance in the race: "Our car has made great progress this year. There is no doubt about it. We showed the car in today's qualifying session. The pace gives us the confidence to compete with the teams ahead and a podium is not out of the question."
As for Citroen, their prospects in this race are not worth looking up to. Both Altaïr and Delacro missed Q3 today. Altaïr said before that the Australian Grand Prix will be the low point of Citroen’s season. Their cars Further upgrades are required to achieve the desired level.In this weekend's main race, Citroen's more realistic goal may still be to strive for some points.
Although Citroën has upgraded its car before, judging from the performance of the previous games, Citroën is still far behind the leading team, and the stability of the car also needs to be further improved.Altaïr has previously said that the Australian Grand Prix may be the lowest point of Citroën's entire season and that they need more upgrades.
In today's qualifying, the performance of the two Citroen drivers can only be regarded as quite satisfactory. They both entered Q2, but they seemed powerless in the final stage of Q2, and were continuously surpassed by their competitors. In the end, it was a pity that they missed Q3. Artest Will will start the race in 11th place, with teammate Delacro closely behind him.
The result of missing Q3 is certainly not outstanding, but Altaïr is satisfied with it: "I am basically satisfied with the performance of qualifying. I think we are already very fast, which is basically consistent with our previous expectations. In the third In wet conditions, we were very close to the car in front, and in qualifying, we have been fluctuating between 7th and 12th, which is a good start to the season."
Altaïr admitted that the team's hopes for this season are mainly pinned on future upgrades: "We will have a lot of upgrades next, and we are the only team that has to do this. This will make us more competitive, and then we will It's going to be a promising year. The tire strategy for tomorrow's race is going to be very important. The three tires here are pretty close. We'll start from tenth and we'll have Seaver in front of us, so I think it's a good one. Start."
Although Dongsheng is not very optimistic, his performance after coming to Melbourne is quite good. In the previous practice matches and the first two quarters of qualifying, Dongsheng and Bingcheng were very close. Daniel also became The first driver to break the 2 minute and 1 seconds barrier.But Stewart's performance on the last lap in Q22 was really amazing, and he finally took pole position with an advantage of more than 3 seconds.
Although he missed the pole position, Dongsheng Shangxia did not lose confidence. As the defending champion of this race, Daniel insisted that the team's speed was very close to Bingcheng after the race: "I felt very unhappy after yesterday's practice session. Because I really didn't find the feeling, but we continued to improve in qualifying, and I think we have reasons to be happy about this result. In the last lap of Q3, I chose to brake very late at turn 13, although we Didn't get pole position, but everyone was very close. Tomorrow's race I think our car will continue to improve, so I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's race."
Dongsheng's performance in the long distance has always been better than the single-lap performance. Daniel believes that the team has a chance to complete a comeback in the race: "We are very close to the strength of Bingcheng. We saw yesterday that the strength of the two sides in the long distance Very close, it's not an easy track to overtake, but we had chances at the start and throughout the race, so we'll see."
Santak's performance today has always been better than his teammate Daniel. He also said after the game that Dongsheng definitely has his own chance in the main game: "This is only the first game of this season. If you Look at our gap in qualifying, it is indeed bigger than we expected. But things are definitely not that simple, we can see in the race, we can improve some things, next we Just keep working hard and see what happens tomorrow."
In last year's Australian Grand Prix, Daniel defeated the two ice city drivers to win the championship. This year, they have another advantage, that is, another ice city driver, Xi Weier, is in the qualifying A severe crash during the race left Stewart alone, with Daniel and Santak able to focus their fire on Stewart at the start.
The manager of the Leysin team said that the two drivers in the team had the opportunity to compete for the front row in qualifying on Saturday. In the end, Tesrock and Vergil led back with 3th and 13th respectively, and the latter still needs to compete in the race. Accept the penalty of [-] back penalty.For this result, the manager of the Leysin team believes that Tesrock made a big mistake in the [-]th corner, which caused the team to miss the opportunity.
"The rain this morning did not give us a qualifying session in the rainy area. Our real strength is very close to that of Dongsheng, and Tesrock failed to complete the best performance in the last lap, which led to his It’s a good opportunity for me to start in the first row tomorrow. Virgil also failed to perform well in qualifying, and the final eighth start means that he needs to make new countermeasures for tomorrow’s strategy.”
(End of this chapter)