Although he just tested in the afternoon with Caterham Racing, his adaptation period was rather fast. Argentina´s driver finished 10th despite traffic with his second set of tires.

Facu Regalia completed his first test this year at the wheel of a GP2 car, driving for Caterham Racing during this week´s collective test at Yas Marina Circuit (Abu Dhabi). Regalia was the only driver to test just in the afternoon as a consequence of having just two set of new tires, so the team decided it was the best possible option to take the most of. With his first set of tires he proved his quick adaption to drive the Dallara GP2/11, even when his last time with this car was one year ago, when finished fastest in Barcelona. With his second set of tires, he managed to do just two flying laps, and both with traffic. Anyway, after twenty-nine laps he posted a best lap of 1:50.525.

“The reason for missing morning´s session was we just had two set of new tires, so testing in the morning would be a problem for yesterday´s session in the afternoon. So the team decided to focus on it. I started the test with my first set and my style of driving adapted quite soon to the GP2 car, whose balance and set-up were very good. I improved almost every lap, a good thing because there are plenty of differences between GP2 and GP3 cars. When I felt more confident, just before my second set of tires, I was just one second slower that the best lap on track and I was on very old tires”, the vice-champion explained, commenting that “Caterham estimated that I could improve at least one second on new tires. Then, shortly after leaving the pit-lane, my teammate suffered a puncture and session was red-flagged. Then, when green flag was waved again, I thought there were something like twenty minutes until the end but not. On my first lap, I was just one tenth slower in first and second sectors but then in third a Trident car killed my lap, as I lost half-a-second. On my second flying lap, something similar happened. I was half-a-tenth slower in first sector, fastest in second and then in third, traffic again. Shortly after the session finished, and I wasn´t expecting that, because I thought we had room for other attempts for improving. It was a shame because our target was to finish in top-three”.

The Argentine also said that “even when this end was slightly frustrating because I couldn´t prove my real pace, everyone at Yas Marina knew how fast I went. The car was amazing, my feedback was excellent and I was congratulated by Caterham Racing. In fact, my engineer was surprised with my quick adaption to the car. Now it´s to wait, I will stay here for next two days and we need to keep working on this GP2 project”.

Follow Facu Regalia´s profiles on Facebook and Twitter.

Para más información:

www.facuregalia.com