PREMA Racing qualifies in P7 and P12 for Abu Dhabi finale
PREMA Racing faced another challenging qualifying session today at Abu Dhabi, as the Red Bull Junior pairing of Dennis Hauger and Jehan Daruvala finished in P7 and P12 respectively.
The Norwegian was in contention for pole since his first run, with his Indian teammate not far behind. However, battling within an extremely tight field, with the top 20 covered by less than one second, they could not maximize their final attempts.
Hauger finished less than three tenths away from the pole lap time. He will start from the fourth place of the reverse grid for race 1, before taking off from row four in the final feature race of the year.
Daruvala, who found himself blocked in his final attempt, will start both races from the 6th row of the grid.
Dennis Hauger
"It was a decent qualifying compared to how FP went. We were running P4 for most of the session, so it was a bit of a shame in the last lap not being able to improve. Otherwise, we got a decent starting point for the weekend, and we have the pace to move forward, so we just got to keep it up."
Jehan Daruvala
"Super close qualifying today, but obviously not the result I wanted. The car felt pretty good, but I was blocked by another driver on the first push of the second run. It would have been my best lap, good enough to be somewhere around the top-5. It was a bit disappointing, but there's not much I can do now except to get my head down and get the best possible result."