The first day of Qualifying was finally here and it was a great one for Elliott Boots and Team Pro-Line as he drove to the fastest time in both Round 1 and Round 2! Elliott’s choice of tires have been M4 Holeshots basically from the beginning of practice since they happened to bring some with them. Tim arrived today with a few boxes of M4 tires since Elliott is going so fast with them and we needed to have some for the rest of the team to try. The track temperature is staying very cool even during the hot afternoon times. Maybe today the track will change a little bit and heat up and dry out more so we can try the compounds we expect to be on for the longer runs.
The rest of the team is also doing very well. Jared, Dakotah, Ty and King were fast and consistent in both Rounds. In the first Round Riccardo Berton was super fast finishing in the 6th spot and Truhe, Wheeler and Kortz all made the Top 16 with great runs. In the 2nd Round we saw Jorn Neumann jump to the 6th spot from one of the lower qualifiers running a no pit, long fuel mileage strategy on M3 Suburbs! Yannick Aigoin also found some speed for the 2nd Round and finished in the Top 16.
The track is definitely getting rougher and slower, which will create more separation between the top guys and rest of the pack. It will also become more difficult to put in a clean run with no mistakes because any bump can throw you on your lid. Of course the big talk of the day, besides Boots and his fast runs, was the track watering and consistency for the top guys. All of the top 30 something guys from seeding are all in Heats 1, 2 or 3 and that meant for the first day of qualifying they would be the 1st, 2nd and 3rd races on the track for the day. So, the guys in heat 1 ran on a super wet track with no groove since there were a bunch of people walking on the track the night before due to opening ceremonies. Heat 2 got a better track and then Heat 3 got an even better track. But this was to be expected and isn’t really the fault of anybody in particular. But the real controversy was in the 2nd Round of Qualifying where they doused the track in water during the break before the Top guys were up, once again creating similar conditions to that of Round 1 where the later heats got faster track conditions. It will all be sorted out for tomorrow’s Qualifying as they will start with Heat 7 in the morning instead of 1, which will hopefully avoid the track inconsistency situation for the Top guys.
Be sure to catch Pro-Line’s coverage of the event on our FB page as we go into Rounds 3 and 4 of Qualifying!!
