Jenson Brickley qualified in eighth place, which earns him a provisional third place on the grid for Race 2 at Vila Real, starting behind former world champions Norbert Michelisz and Thed Björk, who maximised the strategy to secure the front row on the reversed grid, rather than fighting for the overall pole position for Race 1.
Brickley had also thrown his hat into the ring and was playing for the same goal, rather than fighting to be at the front, but admits he and the team miscalculated, after one car was missing from the session.
“It’s annoying, as we thought about going for P10, and we decided the target time which we thought would be the P10 time, but unfortunately I was too fast,” said Brickley
“It’s a shame as a driver to not set the lap time that I know is in the car. We backed off in the last sector to make it a ‘P10 lap’, but then Manuel Fernandes didn’t do a lap, Norbi was in the pit lane and Björk also went for a P10 time as well. I didn’t expect so many people to be going for P10…”
The ALM Motorsport driver now hopes to make progress using the race’s two joker laps. “I think we had the pace to be about P5 or P6, so we should move forward in Race 1. We know it’s hard to pass here, so the joker strategy will come into play. I think if we play it right, there’s no reason we can’t make an overtake by using it. It’s OK to move away from someone, but if there are cars behind, you don’t want to go backwards because you can be held up by more slower cars.”
Picture: WSC/Fastclick-AvensImages
