Disappointing qualifying for PERTAMINA PREMA Theodore Racing

It hasn’t been the day PERTAMINA PREMA Theodore Racing was expecting today at Monza. Lining-up for the Italian round of the FIA Formula 2 Championship, the Italian squad struggled to make an impact in qualifying with both Nyck De Vries and Sean Gelael.

The 23-year-old Dutchman had a tough start of the day as he was forced to miss most of the practice session due to a technical issue. After the heavy rainfalls of the morning, the track was dry for the afternoon session but the constantly improving conditions provided the drivers with a challenging task in adapting to the situation quickly. At the end of the day, De Vries ended up in 11th place. He is set for a bold recovery attempt in tomorrow’s race 1 with the Italian venue being famous for providing spectacular comebacks and thrilling races.
Gelael finished in P17 in a competitive pack with a lap time not far away from the top-10. The action will be exciting right from the start in race 1 as the weather is set to be even more unpredictable on Saturday.

Sean Gelael, Car #3

“It has been a tough qualifying session for the team. For my part I lost a chunk of my time in sector 1 compared to the others so there is some homework to do for me. On the other hand, the overall pace is not the one we were looking forward to. There is a lot of work to do before the race tomorrow but if there’s one place where we can overtake, it’s Monza.”

Nyck De Vries, Car #4

“A difficult day for us, unfortunately we missed out on free practice which didn’t help for qualifying, but nevertheless we didn’t seem to have the pace today. Surely there was something on my side as well but we didn’t succeed together today. Hopefully ,we will have a better day tomorrow.”