Top five effort for I.S.R. in Spielberg free practice

Strong showing for I.S.R. Racing in Spielberg. At the recently revamped Red Bull Ring, where F.Renault 3.5 is holding the sixth round of the season, the Czech team owned by Igor Salaquarda not only managed to place both their cars in the top 5, but did that in both the Free Practice sessions scheduled for this first day of activity.

On a track that had never seen any F.Renault 3.5 running before all the teams started from a clean sheet and ISR's technical staff proved their worth once again, giving Christopher Zanella and Sergey Sirotkin two very competitive cars. That allowed the Russian youngster to top the timesheet in Free Practice 1, and to confirm his good pace with a satisfying 5th place in the afternoon session.

In an amazing ISR one-two Zanella posted the second quickest time in the morning session, and in Free Practice 2 the Swiss driver was quick again ending the session in P3, just shy of a virtual front row.

With such results as a premise the team is now looking forward to tomorrow, that will see the F.Renault 3.5 cars take the track at 8.50 AM for the Qualifying session and line-up on the Race 1 grid at 2.30 PM.

Sergey Sirotkin (FP1 - P1; FP2 - P5): "We have good reasons to be happy, the car felt quick straight away, and now we just have to do some fine tuning to make sure we can lap on that pace for the whole race. I could have been quicker in the afternoon session, but I had some issues with my rearview mirrors, they were getting loose all the time. I even lost one on track, and lost some focus as a consequence, I got really angry. Anyway it's not a big issue, I'm sure it will be fixed for tomorrow".

Christopher Zanella (FP1 - P2; FP2 - P3): "We had a great opening day, we had the right setup from the very first laps and I really like the track, so the mood is definitely good. For the afternoon session we made some setup changes and they seemed to work, so we're heading in the right direction. Obviously we know that we still have a lot to do because it's tomorrow that counts, but being at the top of the lap chart feels good".

I.R.S.