Luca Filippi started to put his torrid run of recent misfortune behind him today with his first pole position since the opening race of the 2007 season in Bahrain, with pole position for tomorrow’s race here at the Istanbul Park circuit in Turkey. The Italian was in impeccable form to sweep to the top position, two tenths of a second ahead of championship leader Timo Glock, with the German’s team-mate Andi Zuber third. Qualifying Report: With all drivers on Bridgestone’s hard compound slick Potenza tyres, we were treated to a fantastic qualifying session in which the intrigue and excitement lasted from the first to the last instant. The opening minutes saw Andi and Lucas di Grassi battling for top honours, but with the heat pushing tyre temperatures up to a good operating temperature from as early as the first lap, the competition was intense from the off. Soon though, the fight for pole was being waged between two Italians, as Giorgio Pantano and Luca started tearing the circuit up.
It was Luca however who emerged on top, seemingly inspiring and invigorating himself yet further with every lap he turned. Next it was Adam Carroll and Timo Glock’s turn to battle it out at the top, and as the final ten minutes of the session rolled around, it was impossible to foresee which of the six drivers would finally bag the pole. As they all embarked on their final runs, it was Timo who instantly set the pace, but his lead would not last long. Luca was flying, and despite running into traffic in the final sector, took provisional pole. Timo gunned for the Italian, improved but remained second. Luca however was not going to leave the gap at the mere hundredths of a second at which it stood, and despite a comparatively slow first sector, mustered every ounce of pace that he could to cross the line and take the chequered flag with a 1:34.278, more than two tenths of a second quicker than Timo. Andi slotted into third with Giorgio fourth despite a spin, Adam fifth and Lucas rounding out the top six.
1st Luca Filippi: Super Nova International. 1:34.278 I’m really happy because we needed this pole, because we had two very bad weekends. We scored zero points, so I got more points with this pole than from the last two weekends. I think our potential was good anyway in the last two weekends anyway. Free practice we were always fighting on top, but here we demonstrated that we are still there and our potential is good.
2nd Timo Glock: iSport International. +0.224 It was a pretty good lap and I overdrove maybe the car a little bit in the last sector in the last three corners. I think that maybe a tenth or one and a half, but for a 34.2 was quite quick and I think fastest was not possible for me today.
3rd Andi Zuber: iSport International. +0.267 Qualifying was quite OK, just a little bit of traffic and on my quickest lap I did a mistake in the last corner but as Timo said a 34.2 was a very good lap from Luca and would be very difficult to beat. So I’m quite happy with third place.
