GP2 Catalunya - Qualifying press conference

With Bianchi, van der Garde & Bird

By Franck Drui

20 May 2011 - 23:45
GP2 Catalunya - Qualifying press (...)

GP2 Series: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the press conference for today’s qualifying session here in Barcelona. Joining us today are the polesitter Jules Bianchi from ART, in second place we have Giedo van der Garde from Addax, and in third we have Sam Bird from iSport. Jules, congratulations on a great job to grab your first pole of the year: how does it feel?

Jules Bianchi: Pretty good! After Turkey it was not easy for me, we did a good job in Barcelona, and it was a really stressful qualifying because we did only one run and then we waited to see if the others were improving or not. So it was not easy but we did it, and it is a good start for the race tomorrow.

GP2 Series: What is the secret of pole here? You all know the place well, you test here, and there are so many moving parts: how do you get pole in conditions like this?

Jules: Even if you’re testing you just have to push a lot, and for sure we improved a lot from this morning in the practice, so I think there is no secret: we just work, and we see.

GP2 Series: You were all waiting a long time on your second sets: did you consider not going out at all?

Jules: Yeah, we were thinking about it, but then we saw that Clos and Ericsson improved a bit so we decided to go on the track and wait to see if Sam or the other drivers were improving, and maybe if they were improving we would have pushed, but anyway they didn’t so we just warmed the tyres a bit, and that’s it.

GP2 Series: You start from the front tomorrow: what are your hopes for the race?

Jules: A good start, first of all: I know that Giedo has a really good start from the beginning of the season, so I want to win tomorrow so I have to do a good one, and then we shall see.

GP2 Series: Great job. Giedo, congratulations on P2, just one tenth off pole: happy with your job today?

Giedo van der Garde: Yeah, very happy considering where we were in Istanbul! I think we put a lot of effort in last week with the team, and I have to thank them a lot for that. So I’m pleased with the result today, yes.

GP2 Series: Obviously tyres were going to be an issue to be managed in qualy today: what were your thoughts ahead of that?

Giedo: This morning we went not too bad, we improved a little bit for qualifying, and as you see with the Pirelli it’s just one lap: out for a warm up and then push, and after that the tyres won’t produce, and for me it was quite hard.

GP2 Series: Fabio Leimer was quite slow on the first hot lap, which got in the way of pretty much everyone: did that take anything out of it?

Giedo: Not for me, no, because we went out late and we waited until 1.5 minutes or something, so for us we had no problems with yellow flags.

GP2 Series: You were also very late coming out on your second set too...

Giedo: Well you saw the guys were going out, as he said Clos was improving, so it was just a matter of going out and we saw that the others weren’t pushing, so we came back in to save the tyres.

GP2 Series: Do you think there was any chance of going faster on the second set?

Giedo: No, I don’t think so: we saw that already last year, when Jules also took the pole position, it was all about the first set, and this year it’s the same again.

GP2 Series: Do you think this will change the qualifying strategy going forward?

Giedo: I don’t know. It may be typical for some circuits: some circuits you can see you can improve on the second set, some circuits you go straight after the F1 rubber and boom, put it in. At the moment now we have to concentrate on tomorrow, and after this weekend we’ll see what comes next.

GP2 Series: Great job today. Sam, congratulations on P3, also just a tenth behind Jules: how was your session today?

Sam Bird: First of all congratulations to these two, they did a good job. It was kind of straight forward, kind of like last year as Giedo said: the first set was the quick set, and I was a little bit out of sync with my braking points and not really sure where to brake and where to get onto the power because of some of the stuff we were achieving this morning, so maybe I lost a bit of time there. I did my cool down set on my first set and then I pushed again and I was two and half tenths up until sector three, but by this point sector three is where you really need the tyres and they’d completely gone. It is what it is, we start P3 tomorrow, we can still do something reasonable from there.

GP2 Series: You took a fairly different approach to the rest of the guys today, going for race pace in free practice while the others worked on qualy set up: was it worth the risk?

Sam: I think the work that we did this morning was important and good, so we’ll have to wait and see tomorrow what it turns out to be. We’ve collected some good data and we now need to analyse it, and work out what will be the best solution tomorrow.

GP2 Series: We’ve been in this position before, with you in P3 and Jules in P1: any thoughts you want to share with him ahead of the race?

Sam: No, I’ll wave to him from behind, just before the lights go off, and say “hello Jules” [laughs] No, we’re both a year older now in GP2, and for sure he’s not going to have the same ... last year he had a little bit of the colly wobbles, didn’t you mate? [puts his arm around Jules] We had to put our arms around you and look after you [laughs] But he’s adept at leading now, he’s a solid driver, and for sure he’s going to be able to get a good start: it’s going to be difficult to get these two off the line, but I’ll see what I can do.

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