The Ultimate Motorsport team faces a challenging time on race day to secure a breakthrough podium finish in the British F3 International Series after a difficult qualifying day at Rockingham.
Esteban Guerrieri snared a best placing of seventh for the second race of the weekend but that only came after a near disastrous opening session which saw the Argentine down in 25th place after he took a trip into the gravel while trying to set a lap time.
"In the first session I was just pushing to overtake Sebastian Hohenthal when he blocked me at turn two and I spun, putting me out of the session, he said. It was a shame, because the car was feeling good and it meant I only got one lap on the dry tyres.
"In the second session it was good. The car had a bit of understeer then a bit of oversteer, but it was small things. If I could have put all three sectors together we could have been a bit better but seventh is fine. We have a good chance from there. Four places it's not much!"
Guerrieri's incident in the opening session would also affect team-mate Michael Devaney, who slowed when he saw the yellow flags flying following his team-mates off and was bumped down the order. Having run as high as third, he instead had to settle for 18th, improving slightly in the second session to qualify 14th but the Irish driver was far from happy with the wrong gear settings on his Mygale preventing him from going any faster.
"The car was feeling really good and I was P3 when Esteban spun and brought out the yellow flags, he said. I am used to having to slow for yellow flags but everyone else seemed to ignore them and I ended up P18! It was wrong of the organisers to let that go, but that's the way it goes here. Disappointing.
"The second session was just shite! The car was fine in the wet conditions, but the gears were wrong when it dried out and we were losing up to three tenths in certain parts of the track. Hopefully the guys will be able to sort it out overnight but it will be really tough for me to get to the podium. You never know, though."
