Senna: Being in Q3 was like victory

Senna will line up ninth on the grid for his home race

By Franck Drui

27 November 2011 - 12:55
Senna: Being in Q3 was like victory

Bruno Senna did his chances of retaining his drive with Renault no harm by qualifying ninth for his home race in Brazil.

“I’m very happy with that,” he said of his time of 1:13.761, which was good enough to put Senna ahead of the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher and six places in front of Renault team-mate Vitaly Petrov.

“It was not what I was expecting when the weekend started but it’s good news. We knew the car had good potential here, but we just weren’t sure the level of that potential – the R31 behaved very well! In Q2, the team put a good car together and we did a great job. It’s a shame we had used tyres going into Q3 because we could have had an even better result. Having said that, being in Q3 was a victory in itself.”

Petrov, by contrast, had a difficult afternoon, which the Russian struggled to understand. “I’m naturally disappointed with my position because we have been improving the car step by step throughout the weekend and we thought there was more to come from it,” he said of his 15th place. “We changed the car set-up quite a lot to accommodate for the change in temperature between FP3 and qualifying. As for qualifying itself, I didn’t actually feel I made many mistakes; I had quite a quick lap at the end of Q1 but then I lost some grip on my lap in Q2, which left me where it did.”

Renault’s Trackside Operations Director Alan Permane congratulated Senna on a job well done, but added that the unpredictable Sao Paulo could still make for a challenging race. “We are pleased for Bruno as that was a strong qualifying performance for him during his home race weekend. He put in a couple of good laps when it mattered and he’s deserving of that position,” he said. “It was unfortunate for Vitaly; he didn’t get his lap together when it counted, but generally we are happy with the performance of the team and are now looking forward to the race.

“The forecast suggests there are likely to be some thundery showers so that will give us all something to think about and could make it an interesting race to finish off the season.”

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