Kovalainen: That was an odd qualifying session

Heikki Kovalainen has dubbed his qualifying session earlier today as weird, with the Finn set to line-up 24th and last for tomorrow’s race after being hit with a 5-place grid penalty after passing Sebastian Vettel behind the safety car during last weekends Australian Grand Prix. His team-mate Vitaly Petrov has qualified 20th, however will line-up 19th tomorrow after Kovalainen’s penalty.

“That was an odd qualifying session for me.” Explained Heikki Kovalainen, “I know there’s more time in the car because I definitely lost time on the second run on the options. I made a couple of small errors and felt the rear grip just wasn’t quite there, so there was more to come, but just not today. Tomorrow I have to make sure I get past the cars in front as quickly as possible and get on with my race.”

With Kovalainen confident that the Caterham has the pace, Vitaly Petrov has admitted he failed to have a decent balance on the car throughout both practice 3 and qualifying. However, the Russian is looking forward to the race tomorrow.

“I haven’t really had a good balance on the car in either FP3 or the quali runs,” said Vitaly Petrov, “I think we need to spend a bit more time looking at how to get the most out of the tyres. Now I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The car felt great last Sunday and on the long runs we’ve done here it’s been more settled, so we’ll aim to have a good start, avoid any problems in the first couple of corners and get on with the fight ahead.”

With a full 24-car grid set to line-up for tomorrow’s race, it’s going to be a mad dash into turn 1 for the likes of Kovalainen and Petrov as they jostle with the Marussia’s and HRT’s. Hopefully they’ll all survive turns’ 1 and 2 without sustaining any race threatening damage.