German Grand Prix - Qualifying Round-Up
HARD DAY'S WORK
Panasonic Toyota Racing will head into tomorrow's German
Grand Prix with unfortunate results after today's hour of
qualifying at the Hockenheimring. After having an engine failure
on Jarno Trulli's car during the third practice session, he
went into qualifying pushing hard during Q1, but the team
decided to save the tyres during Q2 and Jarno only went out
once. He will now start from the 22nd place after having to
drop back 10 positions on the grid, due to his engine change.
Ralf on the other hand had a somewhat good day performing
well in Q1 and Q2. However after securing a good qualifying
time and 3rd place, he collided with Pedro de la Rosa, causing
him to return to the garage. The team worked as fast as possible
so that Ralf could go out again and as a result, he was able
move to up to 8th place. Although Jarno will be starting from
the back, he is still motivated to make the most of his race
and fight to the front. Ralf will take advantage of his starting
position to collect as many points as possible to improve
the team's championship rankings.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/07B)
Provisional Grid: 8th
Free Practice 3: 16th, 17 laps completed
Lap time: 1m17.419s (+1.791s)
Q1: 9th, 7 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m15.789s (+1.377s)
Q2: 6th, 7 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m14.743s (+0.965s)
Q3: 8th, 7 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m15.923s (+1.853s)
"The weekend was going well for me until Q3, when the
unfortunate collision with de la Rosa caused me to lose a
lot of time. It looked to me that he was opening the gap for
me to overtake on the inside and then he just turned in the
last moment, where I could not react anymore. These things
can happen and are just normal racing incidents. It was just
a shame because the performance until then was good and I
was in third position. But I really thank the guys for working
fast to get the car out again so that I move up to 8th place.
I think we really could have qualified much better for tomorrow,
but this position can also be promising for attaining points."
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/09B)
Provisional Grid: 22nd
Free Practice Session 3: 22nd, 2 laps completed
No lap time
Q1: 4th, 8 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m15.430s (+1.018)
Q2: 13th, 4 laps completed
Lap Time: 1m15.150s (+1.372s)
"This weekend seems to be challenging for me. Yesterday
I could not go out as much during practice and then things
started out problematic today during the third practice session.
I went out to do some installation laps and noticed that the
engine was feeling strange and then had to stop the car. The
engine needed to be changed out and therefore decided to prepare
the T-Car to save time in order to be ready for qualifying.
Q1 started well for me and my pace was really good. The T-Car
set-up was feeling ok, but during Q2 we decided to go out
only once. It will be a difficult fight from the back, but
I am confident we can make the best of it and push to the
front."
Pascal Vasselon - Senior General Manager Chassis
"Unfortunately we had an unexpected engine failure on
Jarno's car during the third practice session. We decided
to change to the T-Car to be ready in time for the qualifying
sessions. Obviously today's qualifying session was quite difficult
for us and did not go as we planned. We were expecting better
results, and hoped to be as competitive as in Magny Cours
with both cars in the top six. We started quite well with
Jarno in Q1 having a fast time, but we decided to only go
out once in Q2 to save new tyres. With Ralf everything was
going fine until his contact with de la Rosa. In the end Ralf
did a good job taking 8th place with the fuel load that he
had. We look forward to an interesting race tomorrow and a
hard fight for points."
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