2007 European Grand Prix, Saturday - 21 JUL 2007
It was an afternoon of mixed fortunes for the ING Renault
F1 Team's drivers during qualifying at the Nürburgring.
Giancarlo Fisichella, R27-05
Heikki Kovalainen, R27-03
Q1
1:32.378, P9
1:32.594, P12
Q2
1:32.010, P13
1:31.783, P9
Q3
n/a
1:32.478, P7
Heikki Kovalainen will start from P7 on the grid tomorrow,
his fourth consecutive top ten start, but Giancarlo Fisichella
narrowly missed out on the final session (by just 16 hundredths
of a second), finishing in thirteenth position. While the
balance of the R27 was stable, both cars have lacked overall
grip through the weekend, and the midfield battle was even
closer than we have seen at recent races, with eight cars
from P6 to P13 separated by just half a second in the second
round of qualifying. Heikki will be able to race strongly
from the fourth row tomorrow, while Giancarlo will aim to
climb through the field to try and score points.
Heikki Kovalainen, P7
My final lap in Q3 was OK, so it was frustrating to lose out
to Webber by just two thousandths little, as I could probably
have found some more time in the first and final sectors.
But our pace this afternoon wasn't good enough to fight with
the BMWs, and that is our target at the moment. The new front
wing is definitely a step forward for me, and the car is working
better, but we are lacking grip, and missing something with
the package this weekend. The balance is good, though, and
we hope that our new developments will bring us better consistency
in the race. The main thing this afternoon is that Lewis is
OK. It was a nasty-looking accident, but we saw him giving
the thumbs up, so hopefully he will be fine.
Giancarlo Fisichella, P13
After a run of good qualifying sessions, it is really frustrating
not to get through to the top ten. We spent the morning trying
to find a good balance with the new front wing we are running
here and made good progress compared to yesterday. We are
still understanding how to find the best set-up with it, but
the car felt OK in the first qualifying runs. On my first
lap in second qualifying, I had traffic in the first sector
and that cost me three tenths – enough to get through
to the super-pole session. So I knew that everything was resting
on the final lap and I just went over the limit in a few places,
trying to make up the time. It is tough to be starting from
so far back, but that is how it goes. We can certainly make
up positions tomorrow, so now we need to find a good strategy
to help us do that.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
It was very difficult to get the car and tyres working together
the way we wanted today, and we saw a substantial difference
in our relative performance between the two types of tyre.
After a run of races where both drivers made it into the final
part of qualifying, it is clearly disappointing that only
one did so this afternoon. We will need to assess the reasons
for this when we get back to the factory next week but at
the moment, our priority is to race strongly and to try and
get both drivers in the points.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations
For any racing team, a good qualifying session in one in which
both cars demonstrate an equal level of performance and perform
to their potential. After a series of qualifying sessions
in which we achieved exactly that, we were disappointed to
fall short of our target this afternoon. The session demonstrated
clearly that the top two teams are still ahead of the rest,
and that BMW remain the third force. We are at the front of
the next group, but the gaps are closer here than they have
been at recent races. Now, we have to wait and see how consistently
we can perform over 60 laps tomorrow afternoon and aim to
continue our run of points-scoring finishes.
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