Malaysian Grand Prix - Qualifying Round-Up
Today's Weather: Cloudy with risk of rain, air 27-29C, track
35-40C Best 2008 qualifying: 5th, Jarno Trulli (Malaysia)
Jarno Trulli (Car 11, Chassis TF108-02)
Summary: Quickest in Q1 on the way to 5th place PROVISIONAL
GRID: 5th
FP3 4th Best Lap Time: 1m 35.389s (+0.370s) Laps: 20
Q1 1st Best Lap Time: 1m 35.205s (quickest) Laps: 6
Q2 7th Best Lap Time: 1m 34.825s (+0.637s) Laps: 6
Q3 5th Best Lap Time: 1m 36.711s (+0.963s) Laps: 6
"This has been quite a satisfying weekend so far. We
have run without problems and the car has performed well and
looked competitive. Today's lap time just shows that it's
a big improvement compared to last year's car. So we are all
very pleased with this result and it is definitely looking
good for tomorrow's race. Timo has also done a very good job
over the weekend too so I'm pleased for him because this gives
a lot of motivation for the whole team to push hard with development
work to improve the car. I'm confident for tomorrow because
I've always performed well at this track. We just have to
make sure that we finish the race without trouble because
I believe we can score good points."
Timo Glock (Car 12, Chassis TF108-01)
Summary: Safely through to Q3 and row five PROVISIONAL GRID:
10th
FP3 10th Best Lap Time: 1m 35.911s (+0.892s) Laps: 21
Q1 11th Best Lap Time: 1m 35.891s (+0.686s) Laps: 10
Q2 9th Best Lap Time: 1m 35.000s (+0.812s) Laps: 6
Q3 10th Best Lap Time: 1m 39.656s (+3.908s) Laps: 4
"I'm happy to have made Q3 but that was a difficult
qualifying for me. In free practice this morning I had a better
feeling for the option tyres in a qualifying set-up but this
afternoon I struggled to get the most out of them again. It
was difficult to find the right set-up for it. In the end
I was happy that I had a really good lap and a really good
last sector to get into the top ten. Now we have to see how
the weather goes but if it's dry it will be hard for me to
get the most out of the tyres. This is a really wide circuit
and that means there are more possibilities to overtake. But
I'm keeping a lid on my expectations. Hopefully we can finish
in the top ten or break into the points. That would be a good
result."
Pascal Vasselon - Senior General Manager Chassis
"So far the weekend has gone reasonably smoothly - including
the weather, which was uncertain before qualifying. The threat
of rain was there from the very beginning because showers
were developing randomly in the area around the circuit but
it stayed dry and did not disturb qualifying. Jarno's qualifying
position is what we expected so we are very happy with that.
Today confirms yesterday's practice where we saw that he was
in very good shape both on one-lap performance and long runs,
which we will check tomorrow. Timo also did a very good job
to make it into Q3 for the second time in two races. He is
finding it hard to get the most out of the tyres but apart
from that tyre handling has been quite straightforward. Both
compounds are running without major problems like graining
and blistering. So we can head into the race confident of
converting this into a strong finish."
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