Oregon Team completed an excellent qualifying session today at Monza in the second round of the 2018 European Le Mans Series season. It was the best qualy result since the team’s debut in the series last season. Running on home soil, Riccardo Ponzio placed the team’s Norma M30 LMP3 in row three for the delight of his bosses, Jerry Canevisio and Giorgio Testa.
The Pescara-based racer set the sixth fastest lap time in class with an excellent lap of 1m45.910, just over 0.05s away from from the pole. A bold performance for the Italian, at his second ELMS outing after the inaugural round of Le Castellet last April. Back in France, Oregon Team finished eleventh, highlighting a good performance gain.
The only Italian round of the calendar began well with an optimistic atmosphere enhanced by the good pace. The other two drivers who will share the car with Ponzio, Colombian Andrés Méndez and Frenchman Clément Mateu, impressed as well looking forward to tomorrow’s 4-hour race.
“Finally we managed to put together a good qualifying effort, even if the lap that allowed us to grab the sixth position was not perfect – commented Canevisio – We missed a couple of tenths at the Ascari corner, but Ponzio was nevertheless very good. Méndez went well too, certainly he’s much faster than last year and so is our car. Regarding Mateu, in the Bronze Test on Friday he got a good 1m48s lap, 10th in class. We have great expectations for the race.”
The race is not to be missed. The 4 Hours of Monza that will start tomorrow at 12.30 with live streaming on the Europeanlemansseries.com website.
