A third fastest time in the Rookie session and an eighth place in the first free practice. That is the result for A1 Team Netherlands after the first day of the A1GP at Eastern Creek.
Renger van der Zande started the day for A1 Team Netherlands with the Rookie session of two 25 minute segments. After months of drought in the region the rain arrived this morning and so the session started under wet conditions. In the first half Van der Zande set a thirteenth fastest time. At the end of the first segment it stopped raining and the track started to dry. The second 25 minutes were then run on a fast drying track. Because of this Renger set his fastest time on his very last flying lap, which was good for third place.
Meanwhile the sun had broken through at the track and it immediately got noticably warmer. On a dry track Jeroen Bleekemolen went out at 14.00 hours local time for his first official free practice and his debut on this circuit. The A1 Team Netherlands driver set his fastest time in his fifth lap; 1’20.274. With this Bleekemolen finished the one hour session in eighth.
Renger van der Zande: “It went well I think. In the rain we could improve our set up. At first this did not show in the first half. We were there in the beginning, but I went in quite early and after that others managed to improve quite a bit. For the second segment we made some good changes. In the very last lap I managed to set my fastest time, the track more dry and faster and faster, I had no traffic or yellow flags. So, our improvement showed in the end, though a bit last minuteâ€.
Jeroen Bleekemolen: “The first run went reasonably well, of course I did not know the track and we were in eighth straight away, which isn’t too bad Everyone in front of me has driven here at least once. We do need to get much more from the car though, because after that we could not do decent times. We really will have to work, otherwise we will fall behind. The track is nice, there is a lot of elevation and you are kept busy all the time. There is almost no time to ease off a bit, although the straight is quite long, the rest is hard work. I think that overtaking might be more difficult here. The first corner is by far the fastest we have had in A1 sofar. I did not take if flat yet, but it will surely be flat in qualifying and maybe also in the races. It is a challenging turnâ€.
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