Istanbul qualifying/race report

© GP2 Serie Media Service

The Turkish track is one that Clivio likes and, although having been there only once before, he was comfortable with the layout and was looking forward to turning around the back luck he’s had in the last few races.

Practice started well and Clivio was 5 th at the end of the session, in front of Lewis Hamilton and only a few tenths of a second behind Pantano and Premat. “The car was good on the track,” says Clivio. “I was confident we could do a good job in qualifying. We went through a few things in practice and found a really good set up.”

Qualifying – p13

Each car is allocated two sets of new Bridgestone slick tyres for qualifying and the task for the driver is to get the best lap time possible on those tyres without working them too hard (as they must also be used in the race). With only 30 minutes available and with everyone having the same aim, finding a clear lap is also a challenge.

“On my first set of tyres I was very competitive and was in p5,” reflects Clivio. “On the second set I tried to push a bit harder into Turn 8 (a quadruple apex corner which is very tricky to get right) and the car didn’t take it. I went into a spin and damaged my tyres a bit but decided to clean them up a bit and go for another lap but the same thing happened again. I think the spin had done more damage to them than I thought but I improved my time a little bit and qualified in p13, in the middle of the grid. If only I’d had one more set of tyres I think I could have been in the top six. It was disappointing as we should have been higher up than 13 th.”

Race 1 – Saturday, 26 th August

In the early stages of the race, the car gave no real indication of what was to happen but once Clivio had been in for his mandatory pit stop, things started going badly wrong. “On my first lap out of the pits the car suddenly felt slow and I thought the engine was failing.” It soon became apparent that it wasn’t the engine, but a major brake issue as the brake balance was switching from the front to the rear all by itself.

After 11 laps of the race Clivio brought the car into the pits as the brakes were locking on and it was too dangerous to continue. “I was sitting in the car (in front of the McLaren pits which is our “home” for the GP2 races) and couldn’t hear anything but could suddenly see my mechanics moving very quickly and shouting “Fire”! I looking into my mirrors and saw the flames so jumped out of the car pretty quickly. The McLaren mechanics were really quick off the mark and had their fire extinguishers to hand so it didn’t last long but it was pretty spectacular. It’s just a shame it was my car it happened to!” After much investigation, the problem was eventually traced to a faulty master cylinder.

Race 2 – Sunday, 27 th August

Not finishing on Saturday meant that Clivio was once again near the back of the grid for Sunday’s Sprint race. Fired up and determined to succeed, Clivio made what he describes as “one of the best starts of my life. I overtook more than ten cars on the first lap.”

Going into the first corner of the second lap in p11, Clivio found himself sandwiched between two cars. “I braked as normal, but Pantano left it very late and launched himself into me and I could do nothing from then on.” The Italian Super Nova driver’s over-ambitious move pushed Clivio off the track and the resulting damage to his car was too bad for him to continue. “It was very disappointing as we had a good car to race and I am sure we would have been in the top five at the finish.

“Going to Monza now for our last race of the season I’m hoping for a bit of Italian luck to be with us. I want to finish with something good as otherwise I’m going to have a miserable break over the winter. It’s the last chance to do anything and we’ll have to give it everything we can. I am going to be 200% there as I don’t want to end up with zero at the end of the year.”