2007 Malaysian Grand Prix, Saturday - 7 APR 2007
The ING Renault F1 Team endured a difficult qualifying session
this afternoon at Malaysia's Sepang International Circuit.
Giancarlo Fisichella, R27-04 - Heikki Kovalainen, R27-01
Q1 1:35.879,P12 - 1:36.092, P14
Q2 1:35.706, P12 - 1:35.630, P11
Q3 N/A - N/A
Under building clouds, in temperatures of 33°C in the
air and 43°C on track, the team's drivers lost out in
the second shootout phase of the qualifying session.
With P6 to P13 covered by just half a second, the competition
was extremely close, and suffering from a lack of grip, neither
driver was able to put their three fastest sectors together
in the space of a single lap. Respectively, they missed out
on the final phase of qualifying by 0.076s (HK) and 0.136s
(GF).
While the overall level of performance is disappointing,
the team must now focus on making the most of the situation
– and racing for points in tomorrow's Grand Prix.
Heikki Kovalainen, P11
The grip levels were improving with every run, and I think
we had the pace to get into the top ten this afternoon. But
I didn't manage to put my best three sectors together into
one lap, so it's a little bit frustrating to end up eleventh
– and outside the final shootout. From a personal point
of view, though, this was a much better qualifying session
for me compared to Melbourne. I think our race will be with
Williams, Toyota and Red Bull tomorrow – and I am optimistic
that I can do a good job.
Giancarlo Fisichella, P12
The car has been tricky to drive all weekend: the balance
is not too bad, but we are lacking grip, and that makes the
handling quite unpredictable, which means it is hard to put
a clean lap together. Just like in Melbourne, we are a long
way from the leaders, and we know that we need to improve.
Looking to tomorrow, it will be a tough race, as always –
and we are starting quite far back. We need to make the right
calls on strategy, and see how things unfold.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
We felt we had made progress before this race but of course,
the notion of competitiveness is always relative – and
it is now clear that some of our rivals have made more progress
on this circuit. Having said that, it is equally true to say
that we didn't maximise our chances today. Clearly the overall
level of performance is disappointing, but we now have to
knuckle down and make the most of the situation we find ourselves
in. We will look to take full advantage of our freedom to
choose the fuel load for both cars, and race hard through
the midfield pack tomorrow.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations
From the team's point of view, the first thing we look for
is equality of performance between the two drivers and, unlike
in Melbourne, we clearly have that today. The midfield battle
is exceptionally close, but we are not at the front of that
group, and that makes life much more difficult. Starting from
the second half of the field means we cannot realistically
hope for a strong result, but we must nevertheless race well,
and make the most of our opportunities. On the engine side,
we were disappointed to suffer a recurrence of our fuel pump
problems on Heikki's race chassis this morning, but qualifying
ran smoothly – and we hope to see this continue throughout
the Grand Prix.
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