Nurburgring qualifying/race report

© Hoch Zwei

One of Clivio’s favourite tracks, even before his fantastic race win there last year, GP2 this weekend moved onto the classic 5.148km N ü rburgring track for round 3. Nestling in the Eifel mountain region, Clivio had understandably great memories of last year. Just listen to the words of the GP2 Series’ official preview.

“Race Two brought plaudits from everyone who had sat open-mouthed, glued to the television screens as Clivio Piccione took victory in what was easily the race of the year. The final nine laps of that race will live long in the memory of anyone who saw it, as the lead six cars swarmed all over each other, with position changing corner by corner.”

Clivio had more than one reason for hoping to do well here. “The European Grand Prix means a lot to me. I come from Monaco, have a German mum and an Italian dad so I feel very European. I was really looking forward to this one. Of course we hoped we were going to do as well as last year, and I really like the track and its lay out. We felt we were ready after Imola and should go a step forward again in terms of set up of the car.

Qualifying – p13

I felt we were moving in the right direction all the time, and we ( Andy Miller, my race engineer, Tom Davis, our Data Engineer, and me) improved our car each day over the weekend. I was confident we could do a good job and on my first set of tyres I was on a demon lap which would have for sure got us onto the front row of the grid. Unfortunately I made a mistake at the last chicane which spoiled it and we ended up 13 th. I was disappointed in myself mostly because, from thereon, we had to play catch up.

Race 1 – Saturday, 6 th May

I had a really good run up to p7 from my starting place on the grid and the car was feeling good. Then we had a bad pit stop where one of the wheels wouldn’t come off easily, or go back on properly, and that lot us a lot of time. I pushed too hard on the out lap (from the pits) and went off track so that didn’t help. I started to fight my way through, and we were a lot quicker than people in front of us, but I couldn’t get past them. We looked after our tyres well, but couldn’t get a tow from anyone because of understeer. We eventually finished in p11 but I think we could have finished in the top 5 without the problems we had.

Race 2 – Sunday, 7 th May

I lost a little bit of time avoiding a stalled car directly in front of me at the start and then spent lots of time trying to get past Negrao. I was running in p8 for the first third of the race but went off on one corner and Piquet went through. By the last lap I decided to try for a fastest lap so backed off first and then went for it. The water temperature alarm came on during the last lap so now we have to check the engine after this. By this time, though, Piquet had retired so I finished in 8 th after all.

We deserve to be in the points at the next race and we are all looking forward to Barcelona as we tested well there. I am sure we are going to have a good race. Then, of course, it’s on to my home race at Monaco. I hope it will get better and better.