Team reaction after qualifying in Montréal (part 2)

Williams Cosworth

The Williams team drivers ran each other hard during qualifying for tomorrow’s Canadian Grand Prix, finishing the day just 4/100ths apart in 11th and 12th positions. With a high safety car probability and the likelihood of variable strategy choices driven by tyre characteristics, tomorrow’s race offers plenty of opportunity.

Rubens Barrichello: It was good to battle with Nico today and I think the fact that we are so close shows that 11th and 12th was the best we could achieve today and we should be happy that we got the upmost from the car. For the race tomorrow, I know from experience that the race really demands that you look after your brakes, so I am confident that together with the tyre issues here that there will be a good opportunity to do well if we get everything right.

Nico Hulkenberg: I think 11th and 12th is a pretty good outcome today – not of course what we want, but we extracted the most from the situation and for me at least, the track this afternoon was in the best shape it has been all weekend. Although it was a little frustrating to just be pipped by Rubens, I am confident that the tyre management issues will provide lots of strategy options and should make for an interesting race and plenty of opportunity for us tomorrow.

Sam Michael, Technical Director: We made a good progression from practice to qualifying today and only missed out on the top ten by a narrow margin. Now we’re concentrating on our race strategy and tyre selection, which will be critical for the race.

Toro Rosso Ferrari

Sebastien Buemi: “Fifteenth is about the most I could do, so I am reasonably satisfied, although it was so close that a couple of tenths might have made a difference to the position, but the same thing applies to everyone and I think my lap was pretty good. The track improved an incredible amount today giving a lot more grip than on Friday, so you could accelerate and brake much harder this afternoon. It would be nice to get into the lower end of the points positions in the race, which would involve passing a few cars, but our long runs in free practice were pretty good and here you often get incidents and Safety Cars which mix up the order, so let’s wait and see. The team did a good job improving the car from yesterday.”

Jaime Alguersuari: “With the lack of grip from the track and the low temperatures it was hard for me to get the tyres to work at their best, but I can be happy with this afternoon’s performance, just half a tenth behind my team-mate. I think that, because of last night’s rain the track condition did not improve as much as we would have liked. As for tomorrow, anything can happen as Canada often produces a crazy race. We just need to stay on the track and see what develops!"

Giorgio Ascanelli: “I am happy to still be one step ahead of my pre-season prediction for where we would be in the order and our mini-battle with Sauber is swinging one way then the other. It seems that so far this weekend we have the upper hand. I suspect our technical package might be a little bit inferior to them at the moment, but today our drivers did a better job. I am more than happy with the work the team here, in the factory and the wind tunnel has done. It was a major effort for us to come here with a few new components: some of them are a factor of the specific nature of this track and others are down to the development programme, one element of which did not work, thus costing us some time yesterday. Overall, we look a bit better than in Turkey and I hope our race pace will be stronger, with the same level of reliability we have seen so far. Strategically this race will probably not be the standard one-stop and Safety Cars could play a big role. Tyre performance will be critical as the new track surface is making things difficult. Earlier this year the teams requested that Bridgestone produce a rear tyre with more degradation to make the racing more exciting and I expect we will see just that tomorrow, which might shuffle the pack a bit more than usual.”

Sauber Ferrari

‘No grip’ remains the problem for both drivers on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. For Kamui Kobayashi the qualifying for tomorrow’s Canadian Grand Prix was over after the first session when he was 18th. Pedro de la Rosa got through to Q2 but couldn’t do much there either and qualified 17th.

Pedro de la Rosa: “Well, we knew before qualifying that it would be a difficult one. We ran the car for the first time on a significantly lower downforce level and it doesn’t really suit us. We are sliding all over the place, and that’s why the tyres don’t work. There is no grip at all and
on top of that I had difficulties heating up the brakes. We have to see what we can do in tomorrow’s race in terms of tyre strategy, and be prepared to benefit from possible safety car situations.”

Kamui Kobayashi: “We are having a hard weekend here. Our overall performance is not where we were in Turkey. I had big problems with warming up the tyres. I just didn’t get them to work and this made it impossible to exploit any of the car’s potential. The fact I had traffic on my
last lap didn’t help either. I knew today’s qualifying would be difficult, but still didn’t expect it to be that bad. However, tomorrow is race day and I hope to get a chance to improve.“

Peter Sauber, Team Principal: “It has been a difficult weekend right from the beginning, and I don’t think we were able to exploit the full potential of the car.”

James Key, Technical Director: “It was a disappointing qualifying session. I think we could have gone a little bit further, but Q3 was definitely out of reach today. In Q1 Kamui was held up a bit on his last run
and, as a result, couldn’t improve his position. Both drivers suffered from a lack of grip today, and the balance of the cars seemed to be quite different this afternoon to this morning, which caught us out a bit. They were limited in a different way. We needed to rebalance the cars during the qualifying session. Ultimately I think it’s far from ideal where we are, and we need to have a clean race tomorrow and a sensible strategy to
bring both cars home and hope for the best.”

Lotus Cosworth

A superb qualifying session for Lotus Racing in Montréal saw the team pushing ever closer to the midfield, with Heikki Kovalainen finishing just two tenths off Kobayashi’s Sauber in 19th place, and Jarno Trulli just behind the Finn in 20th. The Anglo-Asian squad continued their impressive progression at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, and will now be looking forward to a strong race on Sunday, aiming to have both cars finish the Canadian Grand Prix in what promises to be a very exciting race.

Heikki Kovalainen: “I’ve felt like I’ve done a few good qualifying laps this year, but this one was really good. I’ve had a decent balance all weekend, and yesterday I didn’t have any problems, so I could find a good setup and had the confidence to push. We just need to find a little bit more to really take the fight to the guys in front, but tomorrow I think we can race them, I think we can have a go. I thought I had Kamui for a while, but he just got in front at the end, but you always find a little bit more when you think you can get the guy ahead and that shows how far we’ve come. Today shows we’re making progress all the time – we were only two tenths away from Sauber today which is just great for the whole team.”

Jarno Trulli: “It’s been tricky this weekend as I haven’t managed to complete that many laps and haven’t been able to find a setup I’m really comfortable with. We went with the primes to begin with today, and I could see that I was close to the guys in front, so I took the gamble and went for the options at the end, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. The aim tomorrow is to finish the race, and I’m optimistic we can do that, so let’s see what I can do.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: “It’s been a very strong qualifying for the team today. The big question was tyre choice; both drivers did their first run on the harder tyre, and Heikki decided to stay with that, while Jarno switched to the option. I think Heikki managed to get a lot out of it, and it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that we came very close to out-qualifying one of the Saubers - it would have been another great step forward for us to beat one of the established teams in a straight fight, and we’re nearly there.

“Jarno didn’t quite get the lap time out of the option tyre on his last run, and I think we as a team have to take responsibility for that – his lack of running yesterday really hurt his chances, especially on the options, so we have to say sorry to him for that. But overall it was a great performance from the whole team. Looking at tomorrow, this is always one of the unpredictable races, so you never know, but our aim will be to get the two cars to the finish”

Tony Fernandes, Team Principal: “It’s funny – a really good qualifying session for us, but really this weekend is all about getting cars across the finish line on Sunday. Having said that, today was another big step forward for us as we were just 2.34 seconds off the outright pace in Q1 and to be so close to a Sauber in qualifying is absolutely great, but also a bit frustrating as it would have been even better to beat an established team, and that shows just how far we’ve come in such a short time. Heikki did a fantastic job to push Kamui so hard, and Jarno also performed extremely well to stay ahead of the other new teams, particularly bearing in mind how little running he had yesterday. Tomorrow’s all about seeing the chequered flag, and that’s what we’re really focussing on, but I also think we can take the fight to the guys ahead, and I can’t wait to see how it pans out – bring it on!”

Virgin Racing Cosworth

Virgin Racing demonstrated a positive step forward between yesterday’s Free Practice running and today’s crucial Qualifying hour in the final countdown to the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

Rain overnight meant that the track was once again very green and finding a way to extract the best from the tyres would be key. The track was more or less dry for the start of Free Practice 3, apart from the kerbs, which remained slippery. Both cars stuck to their planned programmes which were designed to evaluate the best set-up for Qualifying and the Race. The team made significant progress from yesterday, with the varied programme resulting in Lucas topping the official list of top speeds, while Timo ended up recording the lowest speed on the list as the objective for his car was to gather as much data as possible. With just a minute to go in the session, Lucas unfortunately locked a rear brake, touched the grass and brushed the wall. The team had to work hard to get the car ready for Qualifying but this was achieved without drama.

This afternoon, Timo was able to take advantage of the progress that had been made with the car, but was disappointed that it was not sufficient to usurp the Lotus cars today. Lucas struggled with traffic during his crucial run which compromised his lap time.

Timo Glock: “It was quite a difficult session for us today. Because of the problems we had yesterday the car wasn’t perfect but we did made quite a nice step overnight which got us close to Lotus today. The car is still quite difficult to drive over the kerbs and bumps but reverting to a higher downforce set-up was the right direction. We will look at the strategy and see how we can make the most of tomorrow’s race.”

Lucas di Grassi: “It was not a very good qualifying for me today. For my second run I got a lot of traffic – especially with Kobayashi - and I was not able to extract the maximum from the car. I lost the quickest two laps because of this. The car is still some way from the optimum set-up for here so we will now look at the best strategy for the race tomorrow and do the best job possible. I’d like to thank everyone in the team for their great work in getting the car back together in time for Qualifying after my ‘off’ in Third Practice this morning.”

Nick Wirth, Technical Director: “Our overnight changes brought us closer to our expected pace here, but in two very different ways. Lucas decided to stick to our Canada-specific aero package, whilst Timo wanted to run more downforce. The tyre issues that all teams have faced have definitely made our Canada package look a bit light on overall downforce, which we saw in the speed trap from FP3, where we had both the fastest and slowest top speeds of all teams! In reverting to higher downforce, Timo has also been somewhat compromised by what aero parts we have available here, so we couldn’t give him the aero efficiency that we had in Turkey, which is why he was a bit slower in qualifying than we can do at the moment. I think Lucas would have found a bit more speed in his last run on a different tyre, but we head into tomorrow’s race with both ends of the downforce range covered and with another double finish our main target. With tyre problems expected tomorrow for all teams, I think the race could be one for the fans, so let’s see what we can achieve.”

HRT F1 Cosworth

Although it was raining in the morning, the third practice session in Montréal proceeded with dry conditions. With air temperatures of only 19°C and a cold track (21°C) the practice was tricky for everybody. Fortunately, the weather improved and in qualifying the track was dry and the temperatures rose up (air 23°C, track 31°C).

Finishing on position 23, Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team driver Bruno Senna (1.20.325) was in front of his team mate Karun Chandhok (24th) who couldn’t do a timed lap in the morning session due to a gearbox problem. In the afternoon when fighting for positions for the grid, Bruno Senna finished on 22nd position with a lap time of 1.19.484 and in front of another team again. Today, the Brazilian was able to equal his best qualifying result this year. However, his teammate Karun Chandhok had a sensor issue in qualifying and wasn’t able to run until the end of the qualifying session, when the track got much quicker because of a higher grip level.

Dr Colin Kolles, Team Principal: “It was another step forward for us today as Bruno Senna only was 3.6 seconds from the quickest in qualifying session 1. He did a good lap and is closer to the car in front of him. Unfortunately, Karun Chandhok wasn’t able to drive this afternoon because of a sensor issue. Now, we have to focus on a good race tomorrow.”

Karun Chandhok: “It was very frustrating today as we missed the third practice and also qualifying. We have to look into the problems and understand what went wrong. After two good sessions yesterday, it’s even more frustrating as this weekend we really could have competed against the other new teams in qualifying. It will be a tricky race tomorrow with the tyre wear and high probability of safety cars. So, let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”

Bruno Senna: “It was a good lap and I am happy with the result as we are in front of another team’s driver. We could work on the setup which helped us a lot to improve the performance of the car today. Unfortunately, there was rain last night and the track got green again in the morning. The track got more grip and quicker even during the first twenty minutes of qualifying. That’s why it was important to be out on the track at the end of the session in order to set the fastest lap. Thankfully, I could do a clear one on that period. Now, we have to decide the tyre strategy for the race. It is going to be very tricky tomorrow for everyone because of the tyre wear and hopefully we can have a good race tomorrow.”