Australian Grand Prix – Qualifying Round-Up
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Panasonic Toyota Racing will line up with two cars in the
top ten of the grid for tomorrow’s Australian Grand
Prix after a strong first qualifying session of 2007. Following
yesterday’s rain there were further showers on Saturday
morning, affecting the third practice session. Conditions
improved and qualifying took place on a dry track under sunny
skies. The three sessions were hard fought but both Jarno
Trulli and Ralf Schumacher made it into Q3, despite a gearbox
control glitch for Ralf at the start of Q2. Jarno will line
up 8th on the grid with Ralf 9th. Following a hard winter
of testing in Europe this is better than many expected. Toyota
will now push to make the most of the positions and finish
strongly tomorrow.
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/04) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 8th
Free Practice Session 3 13th Lap Time: 1m 27.897s (+1.833s)
Laps: 15
Q1 9th Lap Time: 1m 27.014s (+0.370s) Laps: 6
Q2 8th Lap Time: 1m 26.688s (+1.362s) Laps: 6
Q3 8th Lap Time: 1m 28.404s (+2.332s) Laps: 11
“We are all very happy because after a difficult winter
of testing we came here without the highest expectations.
So to have two cars in the top ten is a good result. I put
in a clean lap in Q3 even if I must say the lap itself was
not great. That means we probably still have a bit more potential
in the car. We showed quite a good performance, better than
we expected. Obviously it’s not over yet and we need
to race and we need to finish to score some points. But now
we can look forward to tomorrow’s race and do our best
to come away with a good finish.”
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/03) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 9th
Free Practice Session 3 12th Lap Time: 1m 27.887s (+1.823s)
Laps: 13
Q1 11th Lap Time: 1m 27.328s (+0.684s) Laps: 7
Q2 9th Lap Time: 1m 26.759s (+1.413s) Laps: 4
Q3 9th Lap Time: 1m 28.692s (+2.620s) Laps: 11
“To come away with 8th and 9th positions is much better
than we expected at the start of the session so we are very
satisfied. It was not a perfect afternoon for me. We had a
gearbox control problem during Q2 so I could only put in one
flying lap. Then I made some mistakes on my lap in Q3 so that
is why we were pretty average on the times. But it had been
a difficult start to the week and the start of the season
is usually difficult. So after all that to have both cars
in the top ten is a good achievement. We will now do all we
can to come away with something from tomorrow’s race.
I’ve had some good races here in Melbourne so I hope
there can be another one to come.”
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis
“These positions aren’t exactly where we wanted
to be but it’s better than we expected given how the
weekend has gone so far. We spent most of the morning on race
preparation so that is why we showed our capacity to get into
the top ten quite late. Ralf did a two-lap run in Q1 when
we were on hard tyres and we planned to do several laps to
account for possible warm-up problems. With the soft tyres
there was obviously only one flying lap possible. In Q2 we
had an issue with the gearbox control on Ralf’s car
that we solved quite quickly. Our target was to get into Q3
and when we achieved it we only had one set of tyres left,
which is why we did only one flying lap. It would be an advantage
to have two sets of tyres so we lost time. Still, it’s
a decent start and Jarno and Ralf did well. It will be interesting
to see how teams manage the two different tyres tomorrow.
One is difficult to handle with huge degradation and the other
is consistent and quick. We are in a good position so we will
push for a strong result.”
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