2007 Japanese GP, Saturday - 29 SEP 2007
The ING Renault F1 Team endured a difficult qualifying session
this afternoon at Fuji Speedway, after wet conditions disrupted
every team's planned programme.
Giancarlo Fisichella, R27-02
Heikki Kovalainen, R27-03
Q1
1:26.909, P13
1:27.223, P15
Q2
1:26.033, P11
1:26.232, P12
Q3
n/a
n/a
Nobody completed more than a handful of laps during third
practice, following the abandonment of the session because
the medical helicopter was unable to fly owing to the poor
visibility. This meant that the first laps in qualifying were
a step into the unknown for all the teams. Furthermore, the
challenge of choosing the optimum set-up was complicated by
the fact that the settings used this afternoon must also be
retained for the race, regardless of whether conditions are
wet or dry tomorrow, owing to the fact that the cars must
remain in parc fermé until the race begins. While the
compromise favoured by the team meant that the drivers were
unable to make it into the top ten today in full wet conditions,
the team has taken a calculated risk with the set-up that
it hopes will pay dividends tomorrow. Furthermore, the team
will be free to choose fuel loads according to the prevailing
conditions, unlike the cars starting immediately ahead of
them whose fuel load is now fixed for the first stint of the
race.
Giancarlo Fisichella, P11 (will start P10)
It was a very tough qualifying session for me. The car's grip
level was not great, but I could probably still have made
it through if I had changed to my second set of tyres a lap
earlier. But the main problem was the pace of the car in this
configuration, which was not quite strong enough today. Tomorrow
is another day though, and we have already moved up a position
thanks to Rosberg's penalty. If the conditions develop in
the right way, I think we can have a strong race.
Heikki Kovalainen, P12 (will start P11)
The balance of the car was pretty good, and I did some good
clean laps in difficult conditions, but the grip just wasn't
there: the car was sliding on all four wheels in almost every
corner. There's not much more to say, because our positions
reflected our pace and we were not strong enough to get into
the final part of qualifying. However, we know that we made
some deliberate choices because the cars are now in parc fermé
until the race, and hopefully they will pay off tomorrow.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
Realistically, the best we could hope for this weekend in
qualifying was to finish seventh and eighth behind the three
top teams. Instead, we will start from P10 and P11 on the
grid, with the ability to choose our fuel load depending on
the conditions tomorrow, which could be a real advantage as
we see how the forecast develops. The level of downforce we
ran was perhaps a little lighter than ideal for today's conditions,
which meant the drivers struggled for grip, but equally this
could be very favourable tomorrow at a circuit where overtaking
will definitely be possible.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations
Clearly, we are not happy to find ourselves eleventh and twelfth
after a qualifying session run in difficult conditions, which
other teams managed to exploit to their advantage. However,
we know that the lap-times also reflect the compromise that
each team has found between being competitive in today's wet
conditions and putting in a strong race performance. Both
cars were very competitive in terms of straightline speed,
which suggests that our set-up was perhaps not perfectly suited
to the conditions today – but this may well prove an
advantage in different circumstances tomorrow.
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