Minì happy with ‘strong’ Free Practice in Yas Marina but expects close Qualifying battle

Gabriele Minì was happy to get his Yas Marina weekend off to a strong start, finishing second in a tightly packed leaderboard.

The PREMA Racing driver was in good form throughout the session, as with each lap completed he found himself at or near the top of the timesheets.

Minì’s final lap of a 1:39.630 had been enough to put him to P1, before Jak Crawford’s late improvement eclipsed the Italian’s time by 0.085s.

FREE PRACTICE: Crawford quickest in Yas Marina for DAMS Lucas Oil

However, Minì was still pleased with how things went, even if the 45-minute outing got off to a rough start for him and many of his rivals.

“I think it was quite a strong session to be honest,” said Minì. “Pretty much every push lap we were in the top two. It’s very positive. We even managed to make a big change during the session and we were quite competitive, so overall it was quite a strong one.

“It was quite poor grip because it was quite dirty at the beginning, so it wasn’t easy to keep it on track.

“On my first push lap, I got a really big snap in the first sector, so it wasn’t an ideal start. But in the end, the track rubbered up, and it became quite easier, but it was still tricky at the end.”

The Yas Marina circuit is a track that all the teams and many of the drivers know quite well having tested here over the last few years.

With that knowledge, and despite it being a relatively long lap, the times were quite close, with the top 18 drivers all within one second.

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In fact, the top three of Crawford, Minì, and Arvid Lindblad were all covered by just 0.096s. The PREMA driver is expecting that to continue into the weekend.

“I think it will be super tight,” said Minì on Qualifying. “Everybody knows this track, we tested here last year, so everybody knows it.

“It’s a bit like Barcelona, everyone is quite close, and everyone knows how everything works, so it will be very tight in Qualifying. But in the end, we are here to try and maximise what we have, so we will see.”

One factor going into Qualifying will be the change in conditions, starting with the step from the Medium tyres to the Supersofts. Minì says he and PREMA will be hard at work ahead of this afternoon’s session to make sure they are prepared for any changes.

“It’s not going to be easy to get a good feeling for quali,” he said. “We know that there is going to be a big step, we are talking about two or three seconds, so we need to take this position with a pinch of salt and then try to see.

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“We will analyse the data, see what worked well, what didn’t, see what worked on the driving side in the previous years, and then adjust.

“It would be nice to be on pole in every round, not just at the end of the season, but sadly we couldn’t have that. But we look strong in FP, we know we need to work well now, because we don’t have a lot of time.

“There will be a lot of track improvements, so both me and the team, there will be a lot of work done. So we will just keep our head down and see how it goes.”