After the disappointment of losing a certain victory at the last round of the 2016 UIM F2 World Championship Sweden’s Erik Edin bounced back to success when he produced a stunning lap time to take pole position at Grand Prix of France in Macon.
The joint championship leader had struggled all morning during ‘free practice’, so the team decided to swap engines over during the lunch break. “With the team I have around me I know that we can make those decisions and they will just get the job done” said Edin, “so then it was just down to me to finish the job off.” Making steady progress through Q1 and Q2 Edin knew that he had the pace he needed and would eventually qualify three tenth’s of a second quicker than Tobias Munthe-Kaas. “That’s works out to be an advantage of just over fifty metres around this course” said Edin, “but the biggest advantage tomorrow will be getting ahead of those other seventeen boats, because I think this course will get rough very quickly and I want to be out in front when that happens.”
Repeating the qualifying form he showed in Lithuania was Tobias Munthe-Kaas who will line up once again in second position on the start pontoon. The Norwegian driver had been fastest throughout the morning and also quickest in Q1 and Q2. “Sure I’m a little bit disappointed not to be on pole for tomorrows race” he said “but we have been making some huge strides forward in getting this BaBa hull set up perfectly and I know it won’t be long before we take that number one spot, we just need to work on those small details and pole position will come.”
As the boats lined up in ‘Parc Ferme’ Rupp Temper had posted the third quickest time but following a technical inspection his time was disallowed due to a problem with his gear-case. The UIM Technical Commissioner had measured all the top ten finishers and only one had failed and that was the Austrian driver. “This is crazy” he said on hearing the decision. “When we ran this case in Tvedestrand we hit some rocks so we needed to make a repair. I checked with the UIM Technical Commissioner for that race to see if he was happy with the way we fixed it, which he was. So we ran it again in Tonsberg and Zarasai without any problems in scrutineering. Now we come here with a different UIM Technical Commissioner and he disqualifies us. What we need in this sport is continuity and that means we should have the same UIM Sports and Technical Commissioners at every round of the championship.”
With Temper now having to take part in tomorrows ‘Repercharge’ if he’s to make the Grand Prix, that promoted Mette B. Bjerknaes into third place, her best ever qualifying result. “I’m so happy with the way everything went today, plus I even beat my team mate Pierre Lundin in the process. The team fixed the exhaust problem that I had at the start of the season and I now we can concentrate on finding the perfect race set up because I owe it to them and also to David Moore, the boat builder, to get a good here in France.”
Racing gets under way with ‘Free Practice 2’ at 10:30 local time with the Repercharge starting at 14:00 followed by the Grand Prix at 16:00.
