FOURTH ROW FOR TAKA IN SAN MARINO
Takaaki Nakagami will start the San Marino Grand Prix from the fourth row after mixed fortunes at the Misano circuit on Saturday. The LCR Honda IDEMITSU rider demonstrated his potential early in the day as he qualified for Q2 with something to spare, but could not maintain that momentum in the afternoon as he eventually settled for 11th place on Sunday’s grid.
Having finished Friday in 13th on the timesheets, Taka made a big improvement in FP3 as he claimed sixth position to ease into Q2. However, as track conditions heated up in the afternoon, the Japanese star struggled to for grip in both FP4 and final qualifying. He remains upbeat, though, and is hopeful of claiming a top 10 in Sunday’s race.
#30 Takaaki Nakagami (11th – 1’33.449)
“I’m not happy really, I struggled this afternoon, but the morning was pretty good. The track temperature was a bit lower this morning so conditions were better. From FP4 we tried to focus on race simulation, but it was really tough and we struggled for grip again. Also during qualifying (Q2), it was not a good performance from me. In the end we got P11, we’re the second Honda, but this has no real meaning for me as we’re not very happy with the result. Let’s see what happens in the race, we still have time to work on a few things so maybe we can try some different settings tomorrow morning. We’ll try our best and if we can get into the top 10 that would be good as, so far this weekend, we’ve really struggled to find grip.”
