Team reaction after qualifying in Barcelona (part 2)

Force India Mercedes

The Force India F1 Team will start tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix from 11th and 16th positions with Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi respectively after an incredibly tight and tense qualifying session. Adrian just missed out on a Q3 slot by one tenth of a second in the dying seconds of Q2, however Tonio had a tougher day after a throttle issue in the morning practice hampered his final preparations for qualifying. He qualified in 17th position however a penalty handed to Renault’s Petrov for changing a gearbox moves Tonio to 16th on the grid.

Adrian Sutil: It was still a good qualifying for us. Force India has done a great job all year, we have brought some updates to this circuit that work really well and we’re very consistent. I believe we have a top 10 car and I think we could have got through to Q3 again today, but you need to have a perfect lap and I got a bit of traffic with a Renault in the last sector and lost a couple of tenths, which was all we needed for Q3. I’m not really disappointed but obviously it could have been better. Eleventh is good for the start though as from there we can still have a good race tomorrow.

Tonio Liuzzi: For me it was a really difficult day as we lost 90% of the earlier free practice session with a throttle problem so we couldn’t improve our set-up. Then we jumped straight into qualifying with a lot of expectations, but we couldn’t get the right balance and struggled a bit with overall grip, which is why we are where we are. It was a shame as we expected a lot from Barcelona, it’s an important race at the start of the European season. There’s still a lot we can do from where we are though and if we get a wet race, which we could do, there’s still everything to aim for.

Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal: I think the positions we are in today don’t really represent our true form and pace here. The updates we have brought to the track are performing as expected and we have been consistent over the longer runs in practice. Tonio has had a hard day in the office and couldn’t get the most out of the session after he struggled to find a balance following his earlier practice problems. Adrian was unlucky to get caught in traffic on his fastest lap, which would have given us enough to make Q3 for the fifth consecutive race. From where we are points are definitely still possible and we’ll look to make the most of every opportunity that comes our way to get them.

Williams Cosworth

Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya delivered an unrewarding qualifying result for AT&T Williams today.
The team were unable to capitalise on Nico Hulkenberg’s competitive Q1 pace, falling short of a place in the top ten and leaving Nico in P13 on the grid for tomorrow’s race. For the first time this season, Rubens Barrichello was unable to make it past Q1 and will start the Spanish Grand Prix on the ninth row in P18.

Nico Hulkenberg:
Personally, I’m happy with my qualifying laps. We are of course aiming higher than P13, but that is where our performance is at the moment. I went off in Q1 which caused some minor damage to the car but the mechanics fixed it really quickly, and thanks to everyone at the factory who worked so hard to get the updates out in time for my qualifying session.

Rubens Barrichello: Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clear run during any of my outings; I just kept getting caught out by traffic. It’s going to happen to everyone at some stage this season; it was obviously just my turn today. It’s disappointing because I thought we had a shot at Q3 this afternoon. I was also carrying some car damage from stones thrown up by other cars which we will have to fix tonight.

Sam Michael, Technical Director: Overall, that wasn’t a good qualifying performance for the team. Rubens failed to make it out of Q3
after issues with traffic, while we were unable to convert Nico’s pace in Q1 to take him through Q2 and into the top ten. We’ll look at the data to understand why and work on further improvements.

Toro Rosso Ferrari

Sebastien Buemi: “I expected to get a better grid position than this, as we could have got more out of the car, but I had a lot of traffic, including one incident with Rosberg on my very last lap. It was very close with myself and the three cars that qualified ahead of me all in about one tenth of a second. So, in general, I am not very satisfied with my performance. However, now we must just focus on tomorrow, when we can expect a long tough race. My first aim is to finish the race without any crashes,
as has happened to me so often this season and then my next goal is to bring home some points.”

Jaime Alguersuari: “We have to be happy with this position, as we knew some of the other teams would have upgrades for this race and we had to be realistic in terms of what we could achieve. This is a long season and we know we too will get upgrades at some point. I did my best and at the end of Q2 I tried for just a single lap run and got a good time, maybe good enough to get me into the points tomorrow as our race simulation in free practice on Friday went well. So I am confident for tomorrow and
hope the weather stays dry.”

Giorgio Ascanelli: “We can be quite happy with this result. It was to be expected that we would struggle a bit here, as we have not brought a major update, because we currently do not have the capacity to do so. However, in some ways, we did better than expected, even if it’s a shame that Sebastien was unable to produce a clean lap in Q2 as both of them were affected by traffic: while with Rosberg it was simply unfortunate,
with Petrov it seemed to me to be deliberate on the part of his team. Having said that, traffic is the same problem for everybody. As for Jaime, he did a good job.”

Lotus Cosworth

Saturday’s Spanish Grand Prix qualifying session started with bright sunshine, and Lotus Racing enjoyed an excellent session, closing the gap to the midfield they’ve now set their sights on, and moving further away from the new teams they’ve led throughout the 2010 Championship. The team’s in their performance was reflected in the comments made by all the key team figures.

Jarno Trulli : “A pretty good qualifying session today. The result itself hasn’t changed, but we have significantly reduced the gap to the cars in front. Yesterday I had better pace, so I’m not that happy with my performance today, but we now have a good gap to our direct competitors, and can start thinking about taking on those in front, which is thanks to the guys in the team. We still have a lot of work to do, and I think there’s even more to come from the car, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

Heikki Kovalainen : “I think it was a good session today and I’m happy. We achieved all the targets we set ourselves and we can see the gaps growing in the right direction – nearer those in front, and further away from the other new teams. We won’t have these kind of upgrades every weekend, but I think the car will get quicker and quicker and we’ll keep improving all the time. For the race tomorrow I think we can do well and I’m looking forward to being out there and seeing what we’re like on a long run.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: “It was an excellent session for the team today, and a very good job by both drivers. Jarno has been a bit less happy with the balance of his car today than in practice yesterday, but still put in a great performance, whereas Heikki felt the balance had improved. Overall, our times today show how the package we’ve brought to Barcelona has helped us move ahead, so we can all be very pleased. Now we’re all looking to close the gap to the teams ahead, and take the race to them.”

Tony Fernandes, Team Principal: “I’m really very happy. We’ve talked a lot about Barcelona, so turning that talk into results has been important and we have clearly made a big step forward. I think we’re about a second and a half away from the established teams, and obviously pulling away from the other new boys, so hopefully that speed, with consistent reliability, will see us able to challenge higher up the grid. It’s obviously good to see the results of the efforts that have been put in, and when you think where we’ve come from, about nine seconds off the pace when we first went out on track in testing in Jerez, it’s a huge accomplishment to the whole Lotus Racing team.

“It’s also great to see our profile continuing to rise across the world. We’ve launched our first range of merchandise here, and it’s good to see flags in the stands, and shirts in the crowd, so we’ll do our best to give the fans something to cheer for tomorrow.”

Virgin Racing Cosworth

The first Qualifying session with the revised VR-01 revealed a positive step forward for Virgin Racing today, confirming that the car is a good basis for development during the coming European season. Timo Glock was at the wheel of the modified chassis, however both drivers enjoyed a positive morning of free practice running. Despite a red flag halfway through the session, both Timo and team-mate Lucas di Grassi managed to work their way through their intended programme of changes, ranging from aero and mechanical adjustments as well as final evaluation of both tyre choices.

In this afternoon’s decisive Qualifying session, Timo and Lucas qualified 21st and 22nd. Lucas was pleased with his lap but Timo had hoped for more and was disappointed that the team were unable to further add to its tally of qualifying as the fastest of the new teams.

Timo Glock: “It wasn’t an ideal Qualifying for us today as we were unable to secure the position of best of the new teams. In Qualifying the car didn’t work quite how I expected and so while it is a good basis there is
still more that we need to bring to the car through our development plan with the revised VR-01.
We’re getting good at sorting out our problems and we’re starting to go in the right direction, so we just have to keep pushing very hard to see the return we need.”

Lucas di Grassi: “I had a reasonably positive Qualifying session today. Although it isn’t ideal that I don’t have the new car also, I was pleased that I was able to get a good lap and end the session just a tenth away from Timo. Generally I’m pretty pleased with my performance so far this weekend and I’m confident that we can have a strong race tomorrow.”

Nick Wirth, Technical Director: “Overnight we analysed the data from our first day with Timo’s new car and added some late arriving parts to complete the package. The aero characteristics of the new car are different from the original version, and so we completed our first round of investigations with Timo in P3 and we ended up happy with the results - the on-track measured downforce gain of the new configuration coming in a little bit ahead of our CFD predictions, which has been the same with all our upgrades this year. In qualifying, we chose to save a fresh set of option tyres for the race and both drivers did a good job.

For obvious reasons, the new car is a bit heavier than the old one, and we are still fine-tuning its new characteristics, so we haven’t shown the true difference in pace that the car gives, but that will come soon. Considering that our major performance steps are yet to come in the next races, I’m pleased by how close our sector times are to our competitors. The team and our major suppliers have been completely focused on improving our transmission and hydraulics reliability in the lead-up to this race, so I’m hoping we can show a step forward in this respect by late tomorrow afternoon. Finally, I must pay tribute to the guys in the garage for their incredible work this weekend.”

HRT F1 Cosworth

HRT F1 Team, Hispania Racing, completed their fifth qualifying session in the team’s history at the 2010 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix. Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna clocked 1:26.750 and 1:27.122 respectively.

A penalty for changing the gearbox puts back Karun Chandhok behind Bruno Senna for tomorrow‘s start.
The qualifying session was preceded by the third practice session of the 2010 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, where Chandhok’s F110-01 #20 completed 18 laps before calling it a day to allow the team to work on some vibration issues. These vibrations were okay then in qualifying.

Similarly, Brazilian Bruno Senna also stopped prior to the end of the session due to hydraulic issues which were hampering his performance. However, hard and dedicated work by the HRT F1 Team, Hispania Racing, mechanics and engineers resulted in both cars ready to compete by the qualifying session, held later in the day.

Dr Colin Kolles, Team Principle and Managing Director, commented: "We are currently investigating how we can produce a more satisfactory set-up for the race. This morning the red flag interruption hampered our work and we generally suffered from a lack of grip from overnight rain. What we need tomorrow is another two cars finish."

Bruno Senna: "The qualifying today was not as good as planned. In the morning we could not finalize our preparation as much as we would have liked as we had some hydraulic problems. So, we only had a little test this morning session. The gap to Karun’s car was big
today in qualifying. We hope to understand what problem it is for a better race tomorrow and try to improve it. We want to finish the race again and of course finish well at our home Grand Prix. We will push for it.”

Karun Chandhok:" Qualifying went as expected so we are quite happy. Our deficit to the other two new teams was what I thought it would be after FP3. For me personally, I’m pleased with the job I did and I think there was potential to be a bit quicker. I really have to thank the mechanics and engineers on my car who worked till 5am to get us out on track today. However we have a penalty for changing the gearbox which will put me back behind Bruno but I look forward to another strong race like the one we had in Sepang tomorrow."