La Gazzetta Dello Sport wrote:Team Ratings - Monza
VOECKLER RENAULT
6
A small improvement from last time out - this time new recruit Thomas De Bock was flying the flag for Voeckler with his second place. It was a lucky second place though - without Buyvolov's Aeroracing grinding to a halt and Lon not suffering extreme brain-fade in his altercation with Melville, he would have been off the podium in 4th place. He showed good race pace, but needs to work on his quali form. Spencer meanwhile is usually one with a hot lap up his sleeve in quali, but emphatically failed to deliver and was way down the order at the start. He made some progress at the start, but his first stint being so short dropped him back into the traffic he had already overtaken at the start of the race, and that was the end of that. A solitary point was to be his reward, but even that was taken away from him, thanks to a last lap car failure handing it to the only other car beind still on the same lap as him, Nicolas.
JONES FORD
8
Dagnall was back to his old self. A decent qualifying was followed up with a commanding drive. Diego Alvarez Torrente was not so spectacular, his driving perhaps a tad too relaxed. He was timid when it came to either defending his position or trying to take it away from those ahead. He made no effort to keep the hard charging De Bock behind, and also failed to push the limit when third was in his grasp thanks to Lon's mistake. Still a good all-around team performance, but perhaps DAT might want to start taking the odd calculated risk.
AERORACING ENGINEERING
6
The race promised so much yet delivered so little in comparison. They have been the team to beat this year, but looked vulnerable in more ways that one. On the driver front, Alexey Buyvolov was not quite as fast as his first three performances, but still there or there-abouts when he was struck with a second car failure in three races. What's debatable is whether the car's reliability is the team's weakest link, or the driver in the other car is. The recently erratic Kay Lon continued his wayward streak with an inexplicable collision with Daniel Melville. While the Australian was perhaps defending a tad too hard to stay ahead, Lon's decision to turn in on him while crossing the start/finish line was simply unjustifiable. It was a brainless move with no possible justification. He let the side down today, and was lucky he ended up on the podium - a feistier driver would likely have fought harder to keep him out of the Top 3 after the Melville incident.
ARROWTECH-ACURI AUTOSPORT
6
Nicolas is once again the man carrying the team, taking another valuable point - albeit a fortunate one with Spencer's last lap retirement. This time however Shioya was closer to the Frenchman's pace, and was finally looking closer to a match of his more experience team-mate before his engine died. The drivers kept their heads down and did about what was possible with the equipment at hand. Nothing as extraordinary as Nicolas' Bathurst podium, though.
BOC AUTODYNAMICS GP
4
Anonymous. Steele was eliminated at the start, leaving the team's hopes on veteran Melrose. His performance was nothing like his one blazing lap at Bathurst - limp, uninspired and unmotivated. He toiled around just outside the points for a while, seemingly hoping that reliability issues would strike others and move him up the order. Instead, the gremlins hit his own car. The technical package is capable of being on the podium, but they looked far from such a result today.
MELROSE RACING TEAM
5
Five could perhaps be seen as a harsh score, given Mestolio's pace. But once again, as mentioned in every other race review of MRT this season, the car in a better position was robbed of success through unreliability. The same problems are persisting and costing the team points time and time again. Schiller was able to pick up the pieces somewhat with 5th place, but Mestolio was on target to be on the podium. Perhaps he would have been the one to take advantage of Lon's mistake and knock the German off the podium, had his car not given up so early.
KAMAHA MOTORSPORTS
2
Barely scraping out of PreQ in the fourth berth of four available, the lead driver failing to make the race at all in main qualifying, while the rookie fails to finish, his car crippled after colliding with someone while being lapped. It's yet another shocking day for Kamaha, but I'm not entirely sure anyone in the paddock is surprise anymore. Kamaha has long been a blackhole for chaos, but this year has a key difference to last; they no longer have any raw pace to bank on. During the very odd occasion the team did not self destruct, they managed to pick up wins in 2016. Such form seems a distant memory now.
GILLET ECURIE NATIONALE BELGE
1
They did slightly better with Ron Mingolet, but not by much. If Swerts had managed to set an identical time to Mignolet, the team would still not have made it out of Pre-Qualifying. Times are still desperate, and nothing short of a miracle can possibly save their season now.
HOLDEN RACING TEAM
3
Alberto Cara had a so-so race before the HRT died underneath him, but Douglas Mann had a shocker. A poor qualifying and poor start was never recovered from, and he spent the entire race toiling round at the rear of the field, eventually rocking up in 10th place, the last car still running. Given the kind of cars that finished ahead of him, the race was a ripe opportunity for scoring the point that comes with 6th place, but Mann absoultely minced it. The car is a decent midfielder, and today Mann made it look like one of the worst on the grid. The old man needs to up his game if he wants to keep his seat for the rest of the year, because Cara has been showing him up badly time and time again.
PLUS ONE KINGFISHER RACING
5
Once again McKane failed to contribute anything noteworthy to the Plus One cause, but Neuberg had a more solid run, albeit not of the standard we've seen on occasion from the young German. On a better day he may have fighting Nicolas for what turned out to be sixth place, but in the end he settled down into a solid and unspectacular drive to 8th. Further improvement is still needed to break the points.
EQUIPE GAUTHIER
4
Danny van Rijkens once again demonstrated the one lap potential of the Gauthier package, but followed it up by once again dropping like a stone, ending up outside of the Top 10 after two dozen or so laps. In the end, the performances of both van Rijkens and substitute driver Du Lei became irrelevant, with poor reliability rearing its head once again and taking both out of the equation. There is a spark, but so far it's not a big enough spark to light the fire.
SUNHINE DAIHATSU
2
Once again Sunshine delivered a small imrpovement, but still far too small an improvement to suddenly make them candidates to be qualifying for the races. Mori did just about enough to scrape them in had Martins been able to meet the Japanese driver's pace. Martins instead put in a horrid performance, ensuring Sunshine would stay nought for four in attempts to escape the dark, scary pit of Pre-Qualifying.
FOXDALE ART
2
Team leader Pippa Mann made an amateur mistake that comrpomised the race of team-mate Ben Fleet. Given Mann started 17th and Fleet 4th, and Mann made little progress, the story of the opening laps for Foxdale becomes clear. Then the transmissions in both cars seized up. A standard Foxdale performance - a team that has little to be optimistic about bar the odd attention-grabbing quali run.
BOXTEL
1
Both cars got out on track and set times for the second race in a row. That's about the strech of their performance. Realistically, this team is not escaping Pre-Qualifying at all in 2017, and that includes any occurence of divine intervention. If both cars can break the Top 10 in a Pre-Q session, that'll be reason enough for them to break out the party-streamers and celebrate like they're world champions.
DACIA
3
Lamberigts once again shone in qualifying, and lined up on the front row, with team-leader Simpson stuck in the midpack from the off. And once again, Lamberigts followed the Foxdale and Gauthier examples by plummeting through the field into irrelevance. While the net result was 9th, it's worth putting into perspective just how far he fell in the context of where those around him came from; the three cars ahead of him in 6th-8th positions started in 16th, 18th and 23rd. A driver who starts on the front row should not be getting beaten by someone who qualified 23rd on merit. His performance was both slow and error-ridden. Simpson meanwhile continued to be completely anonymous, doing a steady stint before the car decided it was having no more.
TEAM MECHA RACING
5
Some more promise was on display this weekend. Making it out of Pre-Qualifying is the biggest immediate hurdle they must face, and to little surprise Tojo failed to make the grade in main qualifying. Plaza came close to making it to the end of the race, and not even at the back of the field - a Top 10 with the HRT of Douglas Mann behind was on the cards had the tyres on his car held together. Plaza has done a great job for Mecha this season - they just now need to deliver him a car capable of doing race distances and let him get to work.
REVOLUTION ENGINEERING
1
So far this season one driver has been on the pace, and the other woefully slow. Today the drivers sucked in unison. The technical package at their disposal is capable of more. Early promise with Kremnicky's Adelaide PreQ effort is fast looking like a flash in the pan.
NURMINEN GRAND PRIX
4
They achieved their primary goal, of getting both cars into the race. Essentially anything beyond this is a bonus, but to at least have a chance of mouting a surprise, the car needs to be reliable enough to make the end, and the drivers need to be level-headed enough to see the cars home if they are up to scratch lifetime-wise. Unfortunately, Pascal broke the latter rule, ending his race right at the start. McFry was doing well enough before mechanical woes took him out. NRE are capable of more.
FUSION MOTORSPORT
1
The Fusion package suffers from a power deficiency, which was demonstrated clearly in Pre-Qualifying. Both drivers were right at the foot of the table, squabbling with no-hopers like Boxtel to avoid the wooden spoon.
ROB LOMAS RACING
2
While Voeckler certainly acted as something of an anchor to the team's performance, Katayama's showing was not good enough to be deserving of a pass into main qualifying either. Simply not fast enough today, will need to regroup and try again next time.