Scuderia Coloni Jerez test summary

Second Place For Onidi, Fifth For Ceccon

Fabio Onidi, driver of A1 Team Italy

Photo by: xpb.cc

Scuderia Coloni On Top Again In Jerez

After a first day in the highest zone of the timesheets, Scuderia Coloni confirmed themselves at the top of the GP2 field in the second day of the Jerez test. The Italian team closed today’s sessions with the second and fifth quickest time overall, posted by Fabio Onidi and Kevin Ceccon respectively.

Onidi, after a surprising first day in which he was fifth quickest despite being at his debut on the Dallara GP2/11 car, managed to improve to 1’26”843, a staggering performance that was the second best of the whole test and the quickest laptime among the rookies.

Ceccon, after focusing on race pace yesterday, was eager to go for some qualifying laps and posted a 1’26”954 that proved to be the fifth quickest lap of the two days, confirming the young italian’s improving trend. In the afternoon both drivers reverted to long-run testing, with Onidi simulating the Race 1 fuel load and Ceccon going for the Race 2 configuration. Both obtained a lot of useful informations on the car behaviour, data that the team will analyze once at the workshop.

Paolo Coloni: “We get back from Spain knowing that we are on the right path. All our three drivers managed to extract top performances from the car, confirming both their skills and the competitiveness of our technical package. Also today we did a very good job from every aspect: when we went for performance in the morning the laptimes came quickly, the proof is that both were posted with the first set of new tyres. In the afternoon we went for race simulations, with some very good results”.

Fabio Onidi: “I’m really satisfied of these two days, I knew I could be quick but being in front straight out of the box was amazing, beyond my expectations frankly speaking. Today our day was again split in two: in the morning we did a proper qualifying simulation, with two sets of new rubber and posting our quickest lap with the first set. In the afternoon we went for an high fuel load, in order to give me the chance to understand how the car and the tyres behave when the car is heavy. All in all I discovered that I like the GP2 car a lot, it suits my driving style perfectly and that’s very important, because it means that I can drive with a lot of confidence”.

Kevin Ceccon: “I was looking forward to the morning session in qualifying trim, and I’m satisfied with the outcome. My feeling with the car is getting better and better compared to my early season races, now I can really drive the GP2/11 on the limit. The fifth quickest time of the two days is a good result, and we could have been even quicker: with the first set of tyres I found some traffic, while with the second I did a pair of mistakes that prevented me from improving. Then in the afternoon, with a lot of fuel, we were ninth which is again very good, considering that we were the only ones in the top pack not using new tyres”.