SMP Racing by AVF experienced a great Friday on-track in the fifth round of the 2017 World Series Formula V8 3.5. Lining-up at the Motorland Aragon venue, the team secured the fastest lap of Collective Test 1 with Egor Orudzhev. The team, led by Adrián Vallés, is on-track at the closest venue to their base of Montmelò and showcased great potential looking forward to the two races to be held on Saturday and Sunday.
While Orudzhev topped the timesheets in the AM session, the second car driven by Matevos Isaakyan impressed too ending up fourth 0.341s of the lead. In the afternoon, the work refocused on race simulations and pit-stop tests. The key element of the day was the torrid heat which will make tire management vital. The track temperatures went well over 50 degrees Celsius while the air reached 38°C.
Egor Orudzhev
“The morning session was quite tricky because of the heat. It’s difficult to control the tyres, and it’s easy to make a mistake. In the end we put together a pretty good lap and that was enough for P1. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow in qualy. Over the afternoon we did race simulation test so the times were not important. I’m happy so far”.
Matevos Isaakyan
“The first session was good, I made a couple of mistakes so it would have been possible to set the same time of Egor or a bit better but this shows we have great potential and that we’re confident going into qualy tomorrow. In the afternoon we focused in race stuff and I made a full simulation which went quite well”.