British Grand Prix – Qualifying Round-Up
BEST OF BRITISH
Panasonic Toyota Racing is celebrating its best performance
of 2007 after today’s qualifying session for the British
Grand Prix. Ralf Schumacher posted the 6th quickest lap, his
best result of the season, with Jarno Trulli 10th. That means
the team will line up with two cars in the top ten of the
grid for the first time since April in Malaysia. Toyota had
a successful day of practice to kick off the weekend yesterday
and that form continued into qualifying. After the poor weather
that has been a feature of the week, the sun finally broke
through the clouds at Silverstone today with air temperatures
around 20° Celsius. Both drivers made it into Q3 without
problems and Ralf made the top six in every session. Now the
team will bid to make the most of these positions as it pushes
for a strong result in tomorrow’s race.
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/05) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 6th
Free Practice Session 3 6th Lap Time: 1m 20.770s (+1.019s)
Laps: 21
Q1 6th Lap Time: 1m 20.513s (+1.183s) Laps: 6
Q2 5th Lap Time: 1m 19.860s (+0.981s) Laps: 6
Q3 6th Lap Time: 1m 20.516s (+0.519s) Laps: 11
“This is my best qualifying result of the year so I
am happy with what we have achieved. Both the test a fortnight
ago and yesterday’s practice session went well. The
car seems to suit me better here this weekend and I can just
do what I want with it so I am happy. We were relatively quick
in the race in Magny-Cours so I naturally hope that can continue
tomorrow. First we must concentrate on making a good start.
I’m on the dirty side of the grid which is not perfect
but we will take it from there. It’s been a difficult
season but the whole team has kept working very hard –
both at the race tracks and at the factory. We know what we
want to achieve and we are pushing so I’m sure we can
turn the corner. To have both cars in the top ten means that
we have a chance to score points which we really need.”
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/06) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 10th
Free Practice Session 3 17th Lap Time: 1m 21.321s (+1.570s)
Laps: 18
Q1 13th Lap Time: 1m 21.150s (+1.820s) Laps: 7
Q2 9th Lap Time: 1m 20.133s (+0.981s) Laps: 6
Q3 10th Lap Time: 1m 21.240s (+1.243s) Laps: 11
“To make it into the top ten was a good qualifying
result for me considering how things have gone all weekend.
I have been struggling with the set-up and I have really found
it hard to get hold of the car. We tried to improve the set-up
this morning but we didn’t succeed. It seems that whatever
I tried to do I would be slow. So this was about as much as
I could manage today. We are still in a good position for
the race so we will see what we can do to improve things for
tomorrow. Now I just hope to make the finish and see if we
can score some more points. The British fans are passionate
about F1 and there are a lot of people here giving support
to all the drivers so I’m sure there will be a good
atmosphere.”
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis
“This has been a good weekend for us, in line with
the test we did here a couple of weeks ago where we saw we
were higher up the pecking order. So far everything has gone
smoothly, we have had no reliability issues and we have been
able to improve our set-up session after session. Ralf has
done an especially good job throughout the weekend and his
position in Q3 is a deserved reward. Jarno also did well to
make Q3 but he has been slightly less comfortable with the
set-up, particularly for qualifying trim. But we are confident
in our strategies and both drivers should be in good shape
for the race. Both tyre specifications are able to do the
job here so, while the option had a clear advantage as usual
in qualifying, there is no particular strategy required to
manage the difference between them tomorrow. There is nothing
particular about this circuit that has made us perform well
but since Barcelona we’ve seen that in this downforce
window our car is better than it is at medium to low downforce
tracks like Indianapolis and Montreal. Even in Magny-Cours
where our race was destroyed by incidents, our pace was where
we expected it to be. Now we can look forward to a good race
tomorrow.”
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