A1GP news

A1 Team Netherlands not happy yet

After the first day of the A1GP at the Brands Hatch circuit A1 Team Netherlands has not found the right course yet for the rest of the weekend. In the Rookie session this morning Renger van der Zande set an eighth and tenth fastest time and in the official free practice in the afternoon Jeroen Bleekemolen set a twelfth fastest time. With that result A1 Team Netherlands will have their work cut out in order to move more upfront in the free practice tomorrow morning and qualifying.

Renger van der Zande made his debut on the Brands Hatch circuit in the Rookie session of two times 25 minutes, which was suspended a couple of times with a red flag and also had some yellow flag situations. In the somewhat messy session Renger set his fastest time in the first 25 minutes with a lap of 1'16.987. That first half was held under cooler conditions than the second part and the times of almost the entire field were not faster in the second half.

Renger van der Zande commented; "The circuit is really cool, with a lot of elevation. It looks a bit like Zandvoort. I was looking forward very much to drive here, it is a challenging track. You can see that the raw pace is there quite early, but then you see that the drivers who have driven here more often have got an advantage in finetuning the car. As far as the car is concerned we do have to look into that quite a bit, there is lot of time we can gain there. Both with me and Jeroen you can see that it does not sort the desired result yet. We have not gone the right way in the car set up. All of this did not help us. Furthermore it was a very messy session, lot's of red flags. It was not a good Rookie session".

In the one hour free practice session Jeroen Bleekemolen was also not able to compete with the top runners. This session was also suspended a number of times with red flags. Close to the end of the free practice, which ended prematurely like the Rookie session earlier after a spin by Great Britain, A1 Team Netherlands was still inside the top ten, but right at the end the team dropped a few places. Bleekemolen did set a fastest lap of 1'16.438.

Jeroen Bleekemolen said; "It has not been the best start of the weekend, that much is clear. The car has to be improved quite significantly. We do have a rough idea, at least we do know what is happening with the car on track. Now we do have to find out how we can solve this. Today we did suffer from oversteer too much. But, we still have tomorrow with a free practice where we should be able to gain some. I am not worried too much yet, but we do have to move more upfront. The circuit is really fun to drive, very challenging. I do feel confident about the qualifying, if we are able to get more from the new tyres. That has happened every time so far. Of course we do have to get a good grid position for the race and not be somewhere in eighth or ninth, we want to be among the first three or four on the grid."

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