BMW Sauber F1 Team - Canadian GP - Qualifying
Weather: sunny and dry, 26°C air, 40-46°C track
Montreal (CAN). After very promising practice sessions, the
BMW Sauber F1 Team failed to make it into the top ten in qualifying
for the Canadian Grand Prix. In the morning's third free practice
session only the two Renault drivers were faster than Jacques
Villeneuve and Nick Heidfeld, while on Friday test and reserve
driver, Robert Kubica, was quickest in both sessions. Jacques
finally qualified 11th for his home Grand Prix while Nick
came 13th.
Jacques Villeneuve:
BMW Sauber F1.06-08/BMW P86
Qualifying: 11th, 1:15.832 min (3rd practice 3rd, 1:15.554
min)
The track heated up, we lost the balance of the car and couldn’t
get it to work anymore. It is very disappointing as now we
are in the middle of the pack for the first corner. We should
be all right once the race gets going so we just need to keep
our nose clean in the first corner. We missed getting into
the last part of qualifying by thousandths of a second, which
was very annoying as we were really looking forward to being
in the top ten here.
Nick Heidfeld:
BMW Sauber F1.06-04/BMW P86
Qualifying: 13th, 1:15.885 min (3rd practice 4th, 1:15.616
min)
After the good practice sessions we were naturally hoping
for a better qualifying result. The car suffered a big balance
change, and just felt different every time we went out today.
On my last lap I had some understeer, especially in the first
sector. I am very disappointed but am already looking forward
to tomorrow. We can still get in the points as we have had
a good pace all weekend.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director):
After three strong free practice sessions both our drivers
had problems in qualifying. We are not happy with the result
because we wanted to get both cars into the top ten. Jacques
missed the top ten by 18 thousandths of a second and Nick
by seven hundredths. Now we have to work on finding the right
strategy so we can collect some points in the race.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director Chassis):
This was a difficult qualifying in which we did not reach
our goals. Both drivers were complaining about the balance
of the car, which was not as good as in the morning’s
third free practice. We now have to analyse why this happened.
However, we have proved in the practice sessions our performance
over long runs is good and we need to take advantage of this
during the race to get into the points.
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