Doha: QMMF Racing Team riders Julian Simon and Xavier Simeon and their crews put in a hard day of work for the second practice of the Qatar Grand Prix, but didn’t get rewarded with better lap times.
Simon took his chances with a radically different set-up of his Speed Up prototype, only to learn that the changes didn’t improve his speed. The Spaniard and his ream will now analyze all the set-up changes carried out so far in the Qatar test and in Grand Prix practice in order to come up with the best possible solution for the crucial qualifying session yesterday.
Simeon continued to struggle to find the right feeling for his bike with new tyres. Even though his lap times with used tyres were fairly competitive, he will try again tomorrow to find a way to get the maximum out of his bike for one hot qualifying lap.
Julian Simon who finished in 23rd positions, said: “To tell the truth, we ran into a few problems today. We tried a completely different set-up, with major changes to the rear of the bike, but it turned out that we couldn’t improve our lap times at all. Out rhythm was in fact slower than yesterday.”
“Now we have to analyze carefully what we have tried so far in order to put the best possible package together for qualifying, so we can return to good lap times, go at least as fast as we did during the tests here last weekend and fight for a position within the front runners in the race.”
“We worked at our maximum, but we didn’t take the best of all decisions with today’s set-up. We will try again tomorrow,” he added.
Xavier Simeon who finished 25th in 2.00,742, said: “I am very disappointed with today’s result, because I was hoping to make a big improvement and it didn’t happen. We didn’t improve our lap times and this means that we are very far from the top.”
“We put new tyres in and still had our usual problem. With used tyre, my lap time was not so bad, but not good enough to score a good result. One day things are good, the other day they aren’t and we need to understand why.”
“We have to stay focused and we have to continue to believe that we can improve. We will try other things tomorrow and hope to get a little more towards the front before the race starts,” he said.
The Peninsula
