Heading to
Silverstone I was very confident of a good result. I felt that we had turned a corner in Magny-Cours and, even if the car was still not perfect, that we could work hard together and make something nice from the weekend. For sure it looked that way in free practice: we had a good session and, again, the car wasn't perfect but I was very close to the top by finishing third quickest. We were just losing a little bit of time in the first sector.
Going into qualifying we were very motivated to continue in that way, and the team was 1-2 after the first set of tyres so we felt good. Unfortunately I had some traffic from my team-mate and couldn't improve: I would have been three tenths faster. I probably would have finished around third or fourth without that, but still I was P6 so it wasn't a disaster. We then spent a lot of time talking about the set-up for the race afterwards in the debrief.
However, I have no words to say about the race because the pace wasn't there and the car was just slow: it was very difficult for me to drive the car, difficult for me to push, so I was struggling quite a lot. P8 was unfortunately all I could get from there, and it was the usual way at the end when I was faster against slower cars, but it is just too late by that stage.
Of course that meant that we had pole position for race two, and the rain we were expecting arrived early in the morning. Normally I am always fast in the rain. At Magny-Cours I was good, although to be honest, at the end of the race the circuit was getting drier and drier, and at the beginning it was quite slow. I think every time I have raced in the rain I have had a great result - until last weekend...
On Sunday with the wet conditions it was very difficult for me to feel the car, and even on the out lap before the race I felt it was very slippery. We tried to do some changes on the grid, something bigger to give me some feeling in car and more grip. But there just wasn't any feeling there at all and no time to make a proper change, and so I was struggling a lot under braking, with understeer and traction. It was clear for anyone to see in the race: it was impossible to hold onto the car, and Bruno Senna had no trouble at all getting past me, which normally would not happen. I saw that it was not possible to follow him: trying to push was just making it worse and worse.
The obvious result was that I spun off the track: there was just no way to hold on any more. My car was just not driveable, and we had something wrong, something that to me just doesn't work. For the wet set-up we should have done something more extreme for the wet conditions like everybody else, that would have made the car a lot softer to give some more driveability, but that didn't happen. The car was still very hard and flat, and wasn't giving me any grip feeling, and I felt from the out lap it was very difficult.
I was really disappointed with the weekend overall: I really think we should have had the opportunity to score a lot of points, but for a few reasons that didn't happen. The next race is in Hockenheim, and I really like that circuit: let's hope that we can sort out a way to get back up to the front.
Until next time,
Luca
For more information on Luca Filippi, visit http://www.lucafilippi.com.
