GPGNC Round 13 - Italian GP - QualifyingHello and welcome to a sunny Monza circuit! The GPGNC has reached round 13 and its now time for each of these 22 countries to battle their way around the historic Monza circuit. Celebrated as the temple of speed, the track is known for requiring high top speeds and low downforce, so its perhaps unsurprisingly that a massive 13 teams have opted to use boost for this event. But first we have to find out where they placed in qualifying:
22nd: IrelandTyrson managed to improve on every single lap he did, although that may be more of a statement of how bad his first lap was as the Irishman never managed to improve upon last place.
21st: ScotlandAnother driver that struggled to improve off of the back of the grid. There was not much improvement for the Scottish car and tomorrows race could be similarly difficult for Coulthard
20th: UruguaySomething about the back of the grid seemed to keep drivers in place, with Rodriguez suffering the same fate as the two men behind him. 20th in his first run, and it never got any better after that.
19th: AustraliaIt was plain for everyone to see that McGregor was pushing hard, with the Aussie running wide on the exit of the Ascari chicane to ruin one of his laps. Unfortunately it was not to be, and his effort could only put the car on the penultimate row of the grid.
18th: CanadaConsidering the penalty this was perhaps not such a bad result for Briere. The Canadian was always going to struggle with no boost, and 18th was about as high as he probably could have hoped for.
17th: SingaporeAn unspectacular session for Ana. Not really much to say. Singapore in 17th.
16th: ChinaThe 2nd was a fleeting glance at the top for Tung, but that came from being second across the line at the start of the session. No improvement on every other lap saw him slip down the order.
15th: BulgariaNikolov saw one of his flying laps ruined by a San Marino car on an outlap. In the end it made little difference with the lack of boost and the Bulgarian settled in as second best non-booster on the grid.
14th: SerbiaWith 13 boosts in qualifying someone was bound to lose out. And that someone was Ancevski. The Serbian just couldn't seem to hook up the car as well as others, and ended up in a disappointing 14th
13th: GermanyOn the flip side, a surprisingly positive session for Kederer as he managed to out qualify a 500 boost car with nothing extra in the tank. The German will probably fall behind Serbia in the race, but he'll be first in line to pounce should the guys in front fail
12th: MonacoGrimaldi is another driver who will probably have been hoping to be inside the top 10 but like Serbia is was not to be. All to play for in the race however, as the boost should mean plenty of pace.
11th: San MarinoAs with the incident with Bulgaria, Silvestre often found his team sending him out later in the run window. Traffic certainly didn't help him, and he failed to improve much from his initial lap
10th: JapanJapan used a bit less boost in qualifying then the people around them so 10th is maybe about where they expected to be. And that's exactly where Ihara put the car after a couple of sighter laps.
9th: FranceIt's hard to say much about the performance of Girard in this session. The Frenchman never looked likely to threaten the top of the order and settled happily for a middle grid spot.
8th: FinlandKeranen was one of the biggest movers in the session, a strong improvement on his slow first lap saw him up to 5th at point. A few improvements from others saw him trickle back to 8th, a very solid performance considering a slightly lower amount of boost used.
7th: ItalyA good days work from Tafuro, the Italian found a little bit of rhythm and put himself in a nice place to earn a haul of points in the race.
6th: NetherlandsThe striking orange dutch car looked like it might put itself at the top several times, with good splits in the first sector especially. However De Boer couldn't carry it through the rest of the lap and had to settle for a strong 6th.
5th: WalesPryce was another one who looked like he may threaten the top several times, but perhaps the biggest differentiator was the 100 less boost. Still, the Welsh time will be chuffed with a top 5 start, they just need to keep hold of it in the race.
4th: PortugalA surprisingly anonymous second row start for Portugal. Silva chipped little bits of time of his first lap, but went the whole session in 4th place. Plenty of chances for a podium in 4th place however.
3rd: UAEIt looked like it might be Hatfields day in the first runs, as he set the first time and saw every other car behind him go slower. Unfortunately in later runs it was not to be, and the UAE driver couldn't recreate the magic of his first lap.
2nd: BrazilPossibly one of the oddest moments I've seen in qualifying happened to Brazil, with Cremasco crossing the line to take top spot only for his engine to blow seconds later. The Brazilian recovered to the pits to get out again, but it seems everything had been used up in that one spectacular lap.
1st: South KoreaSeeing the boost allocation, South Korea may have feared the worst for qualifying. Clearly that didn't effect Lin Kuei as the Korean driver set a spectacular time to be the only man to drop under 1 minute 18 seconds. With full boost back in the car for the race, the South Koreans look strong!
So congratulations to
Lin Kuei of South Korea! There was some good battling, as well as some big losers purely because of how much boost was used. Hopefully with that the race should be exciting, and we'll get to see plenty of action!
Official qualifying resultsThanks for joining me for the qualifying coverage, hopefully you can join me for the race coverage which promises to be more... comprehensive
. Goodbye!
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2016 12:08PM by GPG_Nations_Cup.