Thirteenth in the first free practice session this Friday in Aragon, for the third round of the Supersport World Championship, Lucas could not qualify directly for Superpole 2 in the afternoon due to the rain. We had to go through Superpole 1 against some great people (also victims of bad weather) and it was difficult to imagine Mahias winning on Sunday, and even less leading the Championship. And yet…
“The tests were complicated. It's a new team and we haven't had many tests this winter, so we need to gain more cohesion. We all need to learn to understand each other, to know how everyone works. I was used to working with certain people, my chief mechanic worked with the same pilots three years in a row, so we don't all have the same way of working, and there we had difficulty understanding each other. on certain points. Communication was not perfect, which meant that we tried things on Friday morning that we should never have tried because there was a big risk that it would rain in the afternoon.
“It turned out that the choices we made on Friday morning really weren't good ones. But we no longer had time to go back, or to fit a new tire, and I found myself thirteenth in the session, whereas at the very start of this session I was in front. If it hadn't rained in the afternoon, it was fine. But there was a big downpour, so it was impossible to improve and qualify directly for SP2. It was a bad operation.
There were a lot of people in Superpole 1, with Jules Cluzel, Championship leader Roberto Rolfo, and your teammate Federico Caricasulo, for only two qualifying places.
“That worried me a little. I know that in cases like that I'm fast, but you can make a mistake, 15 minutes is short, and above all there are drivers capable of doing only one fast lap while following someone. Either it goes well, or you can start thirteenth on the grid and it then becomes very complicated to save your weekend. I left, did my times on my own, and achieved the best time in Superpole 1, which qualified me for SP2.
In Superpole 2, you set the fifth fastest time behind Jacobsen, Sofuoglu, Morais and Smith. Were you satisfied with this fifth time?
" Yes and no. I actually rode (in 1'55.440) slower than in Superpole 1 (1'55.217). I changed my choice at the last moment to my last tire for Superpole 2 with 4 minutes to go. We hadn't planned for me to take this tire in our strategy, so it wasn't ready, I lost 40 seconds and could only do one flying lap.
“In my fast lap, I turned around and saw three drivers glued to my wheel. I cut off, thinking I could do another lap, but within 5 or 6 seconds that wasn't the case. I was a little disappointed because I think I could have gone for the first row and maybe the pole, but it saved me the stress of the first row. When you go to the front line, you always have the stress of wanting to do well.
On the first lap, you moved into third position, then to second place by the sixth, and into the lead by the seventh, before the halfway mark. It was a quick start.
“Yes, that was the strategy: stay with the group in front and attack at the end of the race.
You attacked before the end of the race, anyway. Leading on the seventh lap, out of a total of sixteen…
“Yes, but I only took the lead for one lap. Afterwards I saw that there was too much wind and that would have made me take too many risks. I was having trouble keeping a steady pace because of the wind. I preferred to hide behind Sheridan Morais, who took the lead because the wind bothered him less. But the rhythm was not regular. Due to the gusts of wind, we were six tenths faster or slower, even though there were no attacks.
How did your fight go at the end of the race with Sheridan Morais, with only 0.01 difference at the checkered flag?
“I noticed at the end of the race that he was much faster than me in the straight. If I got behind him on the straight, it was over for me. I would be too far away entering the corner at the end of the straight to try to attack it. I absolutely had to pass him in the last chicane to get in front of him on the straight because I was certain that he was going to overtake me because he had a more efficient engine than mine. By entering in front of him in the straight, I could arrive at the end 0.1 behind him, otherwise it was 0.4.
“I knew he wasn't very fast in the last corner because I was coming at him every lap. I attacked him in the chicane, hampered him, came out in front and he overtook me as planned. Afterwards I invented a trajectory that I hadn't yet tried all weekend. I stalled completely on the inside of the last corner. There was a lot of wind pushing, so it was difficult, but I skidded the bike a lot in the middle of the corner to get it on line, to help me turn it, and that's what which allowed me to come out on top. Afterwards I was a little scared at the exit of the last corner, where I feared that like in Australia I would be caught, but this time it didn't happen. »
