The second day for Yakhnicn Motorsport
PORTIMAO14-16 OCTOBER
LAST STAGE WORLD SUPERSPORT
SATURDAY FREE PRACTICE
Absolutely better situation on Saturday morning for the Yakhnich team , compared to Friday afternoon.Yesterday we lost all the first official session due to the electronic problem suffered after 5 laps.
This morning, fixed the problem, team was concentrated in the free practice session of the morning to recover the lost time of Friday. Mainly the team was concentrated to work on the tyres to use on the race, so, we was not searching the pure performance in laptime, but have concentrated on the rhythm, to choose the right tyre.
Nevertheless, the performance was in any case good, with Leonov immediately under the limit of 1'47”, (1'46”9) that give him a temporary 7th position. Naturally, as the other team started to work with the soft tyre, we went back to the final 15th position. Not bad, really not bad.
Saturday official practice
All team was ready to smile before starting the second qualifying. The good rhythm founded in the morning has given us confidence of good result.
But probably Portimao is not our most lucky ambient. Every official practice one problem. This time a bad working of the rear tyre speed sensor started to give bad signal to the ECU, and that obliged Leonov to stop at box for about 10 min at the beginning of the session. To try to eliminate the problem team was obliged to put into the ECU the not fully performances electronic map used in the morning, and to cut off the traction control for some laps in the beginning of the session.
So, it was not easy for the rider to find the best conditions to sign a good laptime. In the middle of the session, anyway, he signed a good 1'46”9, catching the 15th position. Unfortunately in the end of the session he was not able to use in the better way the laptime tyre in the last laps, loosing the possibility to defeat the 15th position while some other riders improved they performances...
Now a hard work is expecting the team: check the bike to avoid that these electronic problems will create problems tomorrow during the race. Warm up is at 9,45... a long working night for all team to give Vova the best possibility for tomorrow race!