Friday, October 10: The Sharjah Team’s Rusty Wyatt posted the quickest lap of 45.753 seconds in the last of the one-hour practice sessions for the Grand Prix of Zhengzhou, China on the Yellow River on Friday afternoon.
The Victory Team’s Shaun Torrente was out on the water early again in the last of the practice stints and he set the target time of 46.935sec. as Damon Cohen also returned to action after sitting out session two. The American’s stand at the top of the rankings was short-lived with Arand and Wyatt recording laps of 46.176sec and 46.268sec, respectively.
Strømøy Racing’ Bartek Marszalek had gone about his business under the radar in the first two sessions of the day but the Pole found some extra pace in the third stint and, on his ninth lap, he managed a run of 46.177sec to slot into the standings behind Arand, who bettered his time with a 46.072sec effort. Marszalek’s team-mate Marit Strømøy was getting better performance out of the Apex four-stroke V8 engine as well and the Norwegian ran a best early lap of 47.386sec.
Kyle Maskall had shown considerable promise on his debut with the China CTIC Team last weekend in Shanghai and the Canadian was again up to speed with a run of 47.175sec in the demanding conditions on the Yellow River. Team-mate Peter Morin was just ahead of him in the timings after the opening 15 minutes and then posted an impressive 46.208sec run later in the stint.
Session two pace-setter Rusty Wyatt was the first racer to run under 46 seconds in the final stint and the Ontario man edged above Arand in the timings with a 45.753sec lap. With less than half the session remaining, Jonas Andersson, Ben Jelf and Sami Seliö were yet to participate.
Wyatt remained the only racer to break the 46-second barrier in the session heading into the final 15 minutes, although Torrente came mightily closed on his 15th lap with a 46.004sec run.
Both Duarte Benavente and Ben Jelf of the F1 Atlantic Team had carried out propeller testing and used the opening two stints to find their optimum set-ups but the Briton sat out the final session with Benavente running a best lap of 49.372sec. Torrente’s team-mate Alec Weckström left it late to post a 45.848sec run that lifted him into second in the standings. Andersson, Jelf and Seliö sat out the session.
The clock ticked down to zero and Wyatt finished with the quickest lap to fill the Ontario racer with confidence before the all-important three qualifying sessions. They take centre stage on the Yellow River from 09.00hrs (GMT+8) on Saturday morning in similar cool and murky conditions after forecast overnight rain.
