Gianni Morbidelli at a loss to explain set-up issues

Gianni Morbidelli failed to make it into Q2 at Shanghai, in spite of the Münnich Motorsport team’s efforts to solve the issues which have been plaguing the Italian for the whole weekend.

The former F1 driver went no further than 13th, a blink of an eye quicker than Lada’s James Thompson and more than three tenths off fellow Chevrolet driver Hugo Valente’s pace.

“There’s no question today was a setback for us,” admitted the Italian. “As far as set-up is concerned we have tried as many direction as we could, but nothing seemed to give us any valuable clue to get rid of our problems. The lads have worked their tails off to squeeze an improvement from my Cruze, unfortunately what we have resorted to could neither improve the results nor the way the car feels.”

The team are left wondering what the real problem is, as the car not only does not seem to respond to the changes made by the Münnich Motorsport squad, but not even to new tyres:”What is baffling is that we were stuck into the same kind of situation even fitting new tyres, which is quite unusual and just add to our head-scratching, and we had a lot of the latter, here.”

The Shanghai event is particularly important for Morbidelli, whose long-time sponsor Camozzi has a plant very near the track and will bring a lot of guests in on Sunday:”It’s a shame, I’m disappointed especially for my sponsor: Camozzi runs a plant just around the corner, nearly two miles from the track. They’re waiting for many guests here and I was looking forward to give them something to cheer for this weekend”.

Morbidelli is currently ninth in the championship, 15 points away from the best-placed Chevrolet RML Cruze driven by Tom Coronel, who is now in seventh.