Daly will line up seveth in Spa

27 August 2011

Carlin’s Conor Daly continued to improve in this season’s competitive GP3 Series, taking a seventh place qualifying slot ahead of this afternoon’s race at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium. Following the disqualification of another driver ahead of him, Daly will line up sixth later this afternoon. Team mate Leonardo Cordeiro also took his best qualifying position of the season in 19th and will now line up 18th, Callum Macleod was 30th after getting just one flying lap on slick tyres at the end of the session, but will line up 29th.

This morning’s GP3 qualifying session began in wet conditions following heavy rain overnight. As the first cars on track, the GP3 drivers had the dubious honour of creating a dry line for the rest of today’s events, and as the session progressed track conditions began to improve.

With 11 minutes to go of the half hour session Daly was 18th, Macleod was 20th and Cordeiro was 29th.

As a dry line began to form, slick tyres became the tyre of choice, with Daly one of the first to pit for slick rubber. Cordeiro also made the change, while Macleod also stopped, albeit later than his team mates.

Daly made an instant improvement of ten places and went 12th while Cordeiro also improved. Macleod meanwhile had hit traffic and had to slow to let Valterri Bottas through.

A great last lap effort by Daly was enough to put the American sixth on the grid, although that was bettered by Bottas who crossed the line afterwards, relegating Daly to a still competitive seventh place. Cordeiro meanwhile was also improving and was 19th at the end of the session – his best qualifying result of the season. Macleod struggled to get in enough flying laps around the longest circuit on the calendar, and managed to just one flying lap on his slick tyres – putting the British racer in 30th place.

Speaking about his best ever GP3 qualifying performance, Daly said, “It was a weird session; it started off wet although it wasn’t raining. The track was very wet, although you could see that some parts of the circuit were drying quicker than others.

“My engineer made the right call I think – he called me into the pits and we put on scrubbed slicks which was definitely the right call. I just went out there and tried to get some heat in the tyres. It was very slippery on the first lap. I put a decent lap together which was good enough for our best qualifying session of the season. Now I’m just looking forward to the race. Racing at Spa is going to be pretty incredible and it’s a great circuit to race on – so I’m looking forward to some overtaking this afternoon!”

The Carlin’s GP3 drivers will be back in action for the first race of the weekend later today at 5.20 local time