Pedro de la Rosa: We must all respect each other

Pedro de la Rosa suffered a frustrating qualifying session earlier today, as the Spaniard was held up during one of his flying laps. This impediment denied de la Rosa the opportunity to improve on his time, and therefore remained 23rd +4.219 seconds off the pace. During this lap, de la Rosa was nine tenths quicker than his previous lap.

The impeding of other drivers has become a major factor in qualifying this season, with the various race stewards at each weekend dishing out numerous penalties with varying degrees of punishment. Sergio Perez was issued a 5-place grid penalty for impeding Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso later on in qualifying, with visibility doing nothing to improve the drivers’ awareness.

"It could have been a very good qualifying session, because towards the end I was nine tenths under my time, but on the last two corners I had another car ahead and we lost two positions.” Explained Pedro de la Rosa, “We must all respect each other but now we have to look ahead. Leaving that aside, I think we did a good practice session this morning and a good qualifying session; the car performed well and we would have been very close to the Marussias. We expect a dry race, but on the evidence of these last few days anything is possible.”

Life at the back of the pack has been exceedingly tough this season, with the HRTs, Marussias and Caterhams all coming under fire for allegedly ignoring blue flags. At the Malaysian Grand Prix, Narain Karthikeyan came under verbal abuse from Sebastian Vettel for supposedly ruining the reigning Champion’s race.

With 24 drivers’ frantically circulating the track at the start of qualifying, drivers are bound to trip over each other as they strive to find a decent gap in which to carry out their timed lap. Tomorrow’s 67-lap race looks set to be a fascinating addition to this unique season, with HRT eager to once again do battle with the Marussias at the back.

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