Photo: TCR Media

Gianni Morbidelli optimistic despite traffic issues

Gianni Morbidelli was fastest in today’s free practice session at Macau. The Italian was almost half a second quicker than Craft-Bamboo’s Pepe Oriola, which left the WestCoast Racing driver satisfied and optimistic for qualifying, despite sharing the concerns other drivers have expressed over traffic issues.

“It was a good session, although we are all at the mercy of the traffic,” said the Italian to TouringCarTimes. “It all makes it more difficult to test things, because it’s all more random. It’s pretty hard to get a clean lap to have a benchmark. It’s such a long lap here, so losing a lap is even more of a damage to us.”

The traffic is not too much of a worry for Morbidelli though, as he concedes it is a problem everyone on the grid will have: “It’s a problem everyone has, not just me, so it’s just about having a little bit of luck. To that respect it’s not too different from other tracks for a fast lap. I think the car is good, we improved a few things compared to yesterday. We need to work on a few details, especially in the last two corners, but overall I’m happy with the performance, even compared to last year.”

Having been so strong in free practice, Morbidelli does not rule out taking pole position tomorrow, but believes it will be very much down to luck: “Pole position is about having the luck to have a clean lap, and then try to be as competitive as possible. There’s also a chance of rain and to be honest Macau with rain and traffic would be like riding a bicycle in the middle of the Tokyo traffic. It becomes really difficult, so that’s a big question mark. We therefore don’t want to think about pole position, but we surely have a good basis to build on, and that alone is positive.”

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The Italian also reflected that getting through to the second segment of qualifying would eliminate the traffic problems, and performance would be the protagonist again: “Once we get to Q2 we’re going to get rid of the traffic issue, and I don’t think we will have such a big problem going through to the second segment. Like I said, I need a clean lap.”

Morbidelli also confessed he doesn’t like the track too much, but he hopes some good results will lead him to liking it more at the end of the weekend: “To be honest I don’t really love this track, I never liked it too much. Sometimes it’s all about the feeling you have with a track. There are corners around the world in which you think ‘wow, this is so cool’, but it doesn’t happen to me in Macau. Hopefully I will have a good result here, and build some good memories to start liking the Circuito da Guia more.”

Morbidelli’s last win dates back to Estoril earlier this year.