Spanish Grand Prix – Qualifying Round-Up
SIX OF THE BEST
Panasonic Toyota Racing will line up with a car on the third
row of the grid for the first time in 2007 after Jarno Trulli’s
fine qualifying performance at Barcelona today. It was another
sunny day at the Circuit de Catalunya and track temperatures
were again about 50° Celsius. Jarno made the most of his
flying laps to make it into Q3 where he eventually took 6th
place with a fine lap. Ralf Schumacher was less fortunate,
hitting traffic in Q1 and finishing in 17th place, narrowly
missing out on Q2. He will face a hard afternoon’s work
to make up ground from there tomorrow. Nonetheless Toyota
will now push to make the most of these positions. The team
has enjoyed 100 percent reliability in the year’s three
races so far so it will look to continue that with a fourth
straight points finish in the race.
Jarno Trulli (Car 12, Chassis TF107/04) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 6th
Free Practice Session 3 12th Lap Time: 1m 22.174s (+0.941s)
Laps: 25
Q1 13th Lap Time: 1m 22.501s (+1.381s) Laps: 8
Q2 8th Lap Time: 1m 21.554s (+0.957s) Laps: 6
Q3 6th Lap Time: 1m 22.324s (+0.903s) Laps: 11
“That was a good job by the whole team and the mechanics
and today was a great result. It was a very difficult qualifying
session and we managed to keep cool when it was difficult
and really stressful at the beginning. We nearly missed out
on making it through Q1 because I hit traffic and I had to
do the time on a second lap on old tyres. Thankfully we managed
it so that was a good job. I was also happy with my lap in
Q2, then in Q3 I really went for it on my last run on new
tyres and P6 is a great performance. We expected to go well
here because we have a new aerodynamics package that seems
to be working well. So we have made a good step forward but
we will keep pushing to improve more and more.”
Ralf Schumacher (Car 11, Chassis TF107/05) PROVISIONAL
GRID: 17th
Free Practice Session 3 16th Lap Time: 1m 22.570s (+1.337s)
Laps: 21
Q1 17th Lap Time: 1m 22.666s (+1.546s) Laps: 7
“That result was a pity but this has been a difficult
weekend and that was a difficult qualifying session. One reason
for my struggle in Q1 was that I had traffic on my last flying
run. I was on a two-lap run but I met a car on its warm-up
lap in the last sector of the first lap, spoiling both that
and the following lap. That means the qualifying time is not
representative of what we are capable of. But I’ve also
found grip hard to come by both in practice and in qualifying
so we obviously have work to do. Our race pace should be better
so let’s see how we can do tomorrow even if it will
be a tough afternoon from this grid position. Barcelona is
not known for overtaking but the track has been changed so
we’ll see.”
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis
“After last week’s test we had the clear feeling
that we were much closer to BMW and this is what has happened.
But so far this has been an even more character-building weekend
than usual and we’ve had a series of ups and downs.
In P1 yesterday we were looking good but we had some problems
in P2 that meant we could not be certain about our pace. This
morning went well but we still had some balance problems.
Finally now in qualifying we are where we expected to be with
Jarno. Of course, he only just made it through Q1 after hitting
traffic. But he did a great job and his final outings in Q2
and Q3 were brilliant. Ralf had even bigger problems with
traffic in Q1 and he narrowly missed out, which was a pity
because his pace would have made the top ten as well. For
the first time this season the two tyres were close in terms
of pace so we changed our run plan to have two flying runs
in Q3, one with the prime and one with the option. That contributed
to our performance compared to what we have managed so far
this year. Now we will look to make the most from tomorrow’s
race.”
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