Brazilian Grand Prix – Qualifying Round-Up
GIVING IT THE THIRD DEGREE
Panasonic Toyota Racing will start the final race of the
2006 season from a very promising position after Ralf Schumacher
and Jarno Trulli both qualified in the top 10 for Sunday's
Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos. After their double points
finish on home ground in Japan two weeks ago, Ralf and Jarno
kept up that momentum today. On a relatively cold day in Sao
Paulo, both drivers were on the pace from the start and easily
made it through Q1 and Q2 on a dry track. Jarno will start
from the second row of the grid after a superb lap at the
end of Q3 earned him third spot for his best qualifying result
of the season. Ralf also showed strong pace throughout and
set the seventh fastest time to start from row four. The team
is still pushing hard for fifth place in the Constructors'
Championship and today's performance gives Ralf and Jarno
a great chance to end the year with more points and a result
to celebrate.
Jarno Trulli (Car 8, Chassis TF106/08B)
PROVISIONAL GRID: 3rd
Free Practice Session 3: 20th, 19 laps
Lap Time: 1m14.051s (+2.608s)
Q1: 6th, 8 laps
Lap Time: 1m11.885s (+1.242s)
Q2: 4th, 5 laps
Lap Time: 1m11.343s (+1.030s)
Q3: 3rd, 13 laps
Lap Time: 1m11.328s (+0.648s)
"It is obviously great to be up so high and it has been
a good weekend so far for us. We have been pushing hard all
season to improve the car and you can see from today that
we have definitely made a good step forward. So far this weekend
we have looked pretty strong so I am confident because the
car is performing well and we have everything we need to have
a good race tomorrow. Our Bridgestone tyres are looking very
competitive so I am looking forward to tomorrow when I hope
I can challenge for the podium. This year I have been close
to the podium a few times and it has slipped away with a few
laps remaining so it would be great to end the season with
a top-three finish. However, our first target for tomorrow
will be to take fifth in the Constructors' Championship and
for that we will try to score as many points as possible."
Ralf Schumacher (Car 7, Chassis TF106/10B)
PROVISIONAL GRID: 7th
Free Practice Session 3: 16th, 20 laps
Lap Time: 1m13.642s (+2.199s)
Q1: 3rd, 8 laps
Lap Time: 1m11.713s (+1.070s)
Q2: 7th, 6 laps
Lap Time: 1m 11.550s (+1.237s)
Q3: 7th, 13 laps
Lap Time: 1m11.685s (+1.015s)
"That was a reasonably good qualifying performance for
the team. Jarno did a great job to get third place and seventh
is a decent result for me too so both of us are in a positive
position for tomorrow. From there we should be able score
a good result here. Getting the right balance on the car this
weekend has been a bit of a challenge but we worked at it
this morning and found a reasonable set-up for qualifying.
My lap in Q3 wasn't too bad, it was clean and I didn't make
any mistakes but I simply was not quite quick enough to qualify
any higher today. But I am looking forward to the race and
I hope I can score more points to help the team secure fifth
place in the Constructors' Championship."
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis
"That was a good qualifying session but I would say it
is as expected because yesterday we saw we were competitive
here and this morning we were working towards the race so
our position in third practice was not representative and
we knew that. The cold weather conditions could have made
it a little bit tricky as it is colder than usual in Brazil
but we were expecting that from our weather forecasts and
we were able to take it into account when we chose which two
tyre compounds to use this weekend. Choosing which of those
two to use was quite a difficult decision to make - but it
certainly doesn't look too bad now! We had high expectations
so we are quite happy with the outcome of the qualifying.
Still it could have been a little bit better for both cars,
we could have been even further up the grid but we are not
complaining. It looks pretty good for tomorrow and we are
pretty confident with the race pace."
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