Building up the weekend and traits from karting: How I Race with Gabriele Minì

PREMA Racing’s Gabriele Minì is the next member of the grid to give us the inside scoop on his driving style, giving us the lowdown into how he likes to go racing.

The Italian talks to us about how he likes to setup a car, building up to the final lap in Qualifying, the benefits of testing and much more.

“It's a bit hard to say what my driving style is, but I like a car that turns quite well, I just feel like I need that front. It's always up to driver preference, but I prefer a car that turns quite well.

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“This all comes from karting. In some ways I have always had setups like this, so I am used to that now, and now I prefer it that way.

“I guess it's why testing is good, to try and work with the team to get the car like that, but also in a way it's on the driver to adapt. For some reason, you can't have that setup and then the goal has to be to adapt to the balance. It's not always easy but that is what testing is for.

“In terms of braking, it's again hard to say. The F2 car requires a very specific way of driving, you need to be very aggressive with the braking, as late as possible, really aggressive.

“But it’s also based on the balance once again. If you can't drive the way you want or you have to drive it in a specific way. It's really a heavy car, and it's not easy, so there is a proper technique, so you drive it in the way that is quickest.

“It also depends on the tyres and the conditions. You can't really afford to put too much the brakes, especially with the Harder tyres for example because we will lock up.

“So it depends a lot on the wind, track conditions, the type of corner and the setup.

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“Overall, I think it's much more enjoyable in quali. You have much more speed you can carry, but in the races, you need to drive smoothly and save things a bit, while in quali, you can use everything in that lap.

“The thing is in F3, we have really soft tyres and they grain, so you learn quite a lot to save and after you need to adjust a bit. It's more for the temperature rather than wear itself most of the time.

“So it's not an easy thing to do, but I think that now it's not too hard to learn tyre management because we are coming from F3.

“For Qualifying, it all starts in FP. The work you do there is really key. You are trying to build up the weekend lap by lap, so since we have very few laps before quali, compromising FP can compromise your weekend quite a lot.

“In quali, it's a lot different in terms of conditions. So the goal is trying to have a banker lap on the first push and then to put it all together for the second push.

“It's not always like that, it's not always easy, so it's that last push we need to put everything together, trying to be in the top five, or at least the top 10 to be in the reverse grid.

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“At the beginning of the year I was quite strong in quali, it was our friend.

“Also leaving margin at times can be important. But it depends on the corner. There are some that if you push too much you get penalised, some not so much. I think the ones that you are going to get penalised, they are the ones you leave a bit.

“But it's not easy to decide where or to choose which one. If you feel like you are going to lose the car, you take some margin. But I don't think anybody goes into the lap and says this corner I am going to take some margin, you go into the lap and see how it is, at least that's what I do.”