Formula 1 News

2010 Canadian GP, qualifying: Team quotes 

Christian Horner: “A really interesting qualifying session. We opted for a strategically different route to the other cars around us, by opting to run on the hard tyre. Both drivers felt it was the better tyre to start the race on tomorrow. I’m very happy with both Mark and Sebastian’s performance at this track that, coming here, we knew shouldn’t be one of our strongest. So to achieve second and third is a really strong team result.”

Fabrice Lom: “It’s a bit of a sad day, as it’s the first time we didn’t get pole position this year. But, it’s still a good result – second and third is very respectable, especially on this track. It’s difficult for engines due to the long straights, but we think we have the tool to do well during tomorrow’s race.”

Stefano Domenicali: “We are reasonably pleased with this result, which maybe could even have been slightly better Both yesterday and today we have proved capable of fighting for the top places, but we are well aware that it is the race that counts as this is when the points are given out. Traditionally, the Canadian Grand Prix is action packed and so tomorrow we must be ready to make the most of every opportunity. Compared to the earlier races in the season, there is also the variable of the different tyre choice strategies of the cars classified on the top three rows: we will see who has made the right decision. Reliability remains the crucial factor, especially on a track like Montreal which is tough on the mechanical components of the cars.”

Chris Dyer: “We are happy to have gone back to getting both cars through to Q3. Both Felipe and Fernando got the most out of the performance of the F10: a couple of tiny errors cost practically nothing in terms of lap times. It’s a shame that, right at the end, for just a few thousandths, Fernando found himself pushed back to fourth place and will therefore start from the dirtier side of the grid. From a purely technical point of view, it was a relatively quiet day, without any major problems and we believe we have a good potential to do well in tomorrow’s race.”

Mike Gascoyne: “It’s been a very strong qualifying for the team today. The big question was tyre choice; both drivers did their first run on the harder tyre, and Heikki decided to stay with that, while Jarno switched to the option. I think Heikki managed to get a lot out of it, and it’s a sign of how far we’ve come that we came very close to out-qualifying one of the Saubers – it would have been another great step forward for us to beat one of the established teams in a straight fight, and we’re nearly there. Jarno didn’t quite get the lap time out of the option tyre on his last run, and I think we as a team have to take responsibility for that – his lack of running yesterday really hurt his chances, especially on the options, so we have to say sorry to him for that. But overall it was a great performance from the whole team. Looking at tomorrow, this is always one of the unpredictable races, so you never know, but our aim will be to get the two cars to the finish”

Tony Fernandes: “It’s funny – a really good qualifying session for us, but really this weekend is all about getting cars across the finish line on Sunday. Having said that, today was another big step forward for us as we were just 2.34 seconds off the outright pace in Q1 and to be so close to a Sauber in qualifying is absolutely great, but also a bit frustrating as it would have been even better to beat an established team, and that shows just how far we’ve come in such a short time. Heikki did a fantastic job to push Kamui so hard, and Jarno also performed extremely well to stay ahead of the other new teams, particularly bearing in mind how little running he had yesterday. Tomorrow’s all about seeing the chequered flag, and that’s what we’re really focussing on, but I also think we can take the fight to the guys ahead, and I can’t wait to see how it pans out – bring it on!”

Martin Whitmarsh: “Today we saw a stunning and dramatic lap from Lewis to snatch pole position in the last seconds of qualifying. He loves this circuit – he scored his first ever grand prix pole position and his first ever grand prix victory here in 2007, of course – and, having won in Turkey two weeks ago, he’s very motivated to continue his winning run here in Canada. He did his time on the Option tyre, and will therefore start on it tomorrow. Clearly, it’s less durable than the Prime, but you have to use it some time and we think we’ve got a strong strategy for the race. Jenson did a very solid job, too, securing fifth place on tomorrow’s grid, and is also well placed to score plenty of points tomorrow. He’s consistently shown himself to be an extremely fast and combative driver in race conditions – and, all things considered, we’re very happy with how things are shaping up for tomorrow. Finally, I want to add two more things. First, I want to say ‘Bravo!’ to our mechanics, who did such a brilliant job to get Lewis’s car ready for qualifying in so short a time. And, second, it’s fantastic that we’re racing in North America once again. So let’s hope Formula 1 puts on a brilliant show tomorrow for the Formula 1 fans of not only Canada but of all of North America, too.”

Sam Michael: “We made a good progression from practice to qualifying today and only missed out on the top ten by a narrow margin. Now we’re concentrating on our race strategy and tyre selection, which will be critical for the race.”

Nick Wirth: “Our overnight changes brought us closer to our expected pace here, but in two very different ways. Lucas decided to stick to our Canada-specific aero package, whilst Timo wanted to run more downforce. The tyre issues that all teams have faced have definitely made our Canada package look a bit light on overall downforce, which we saw in the speed trap from FP3, where we had both the fastest and slowest top speeds of all teams! In reverting to higher downforce, Timo has also been somewhat compromised by what aero parts we have available here, so we couldn’t give him the aero efficiency that we had in Turkey, which is why he was a bit slower in qualifying than we can do at the moment. I think Lucas would have found a bit more speed in his last run on a different tyre, but we head into tomorrow’s race with both ends of the downforce range covered and with another double finish our main target. With tyre problems expected tomorrow for all teams, I think the race could be one for the fans, so let’s see what we can achieve.”

Colin Kolles: “It was another step forward for us today as Bruno Senna only was 3.6 seconds from the quickest in qualifying session 1. He did a good lap and is closer to the car in front of him. Unfortunately, Karun Chandhok wasn’t able to drive this afternoon because of a sensor issue. Now, we have to focus on a good race tomorrow.”

Vijay Mallya: “I am delighted with this result and so happy to see Tonio back to his best again. We believed in him and wanted to give him the support he needed to realise the potential we knew was in there. He’s justified this belief today with a gritty performance. Adrian likewise had a strong session to put both Force Indias into the top ten. As we all know it’s tomorrow that counts and Canada has a reputation as an unpredictable race so we have now got to refocus on converting this performance into a strong points haul, which I believe, should be very achievable.”

Eric Boullier: “The session today was all about the tyres because it’s clear that the option is the quicker tyre over one lap, whereas the prime will be better in the race. So it’s going to be interesting to see how the drivers cope with the tyres tomorrow. Robert ran Q3 on the prime, which we believe is the best way to start the race and hopefully we will get the rewards tomorrow. As for Vitaly, it was a little bit frustrating because he had a very good Q1 and showed good pace, but he struggled for grip in Q2 and we need to try and understand the problems he had. It’s a shame because I think he had the pace to make it into Q3 today. For the race tomorrow, we will fight hard to bring home points with both cars.”

Alan Permane: “It’s good to see Robert make it easily through to Q3 once again and it was a fairly straightforward session for him. The option tyre was quicker today and he ran that in Q2, but we then chose to use the prime tyre in Q3. This probably cost us a better starting position, but we feel it’s the better tyre to start the race on and hopefully we will have an advantage over those starting on the option in the first stint of the race. Vitaly struggled for grip in Q2 and unfortunately missed out on Q3. He will start 14th and can hopefully make some progress in the race to challenge for points.”

Ross Brawn: “A very disappointing qualifying session for us today, particularly as I was quite encouraged by our performance yesterday and this morning. However when it came to qualifying, we just weren’t able to put our laps together. We tried both the prime and option tyres but finding the performance seemed to get away from us. There was very little difference between the tyres and ultimately we struggled to get the best out of them.”

Norbert Haug: “Not the best possible result for us today. We certainly didn’t extract the maximum out of our cars and didn’t use the tyres in the best possible way. But tomorrow we will possibly be in a better position.”

Peter Sauber: “It has been a difficult weekend right from the beginning, and I don’t think we were able to exploit the full potential of the car.”

James Key: “It was a disappointing qualifying session. I think we could have gone a little bit further, but Q3 was definitely out of reach today. In Q1 Kamui was held up a bit on his last run and, as a result, couldn’t improve his position. Both drivers suffered from a lack of grip today, and the balance of the cars seemed to be quite different this afternoon to this morning, which caught us out a bit. They were limited in a different way. We needed to rebalance the cars during the qualifying session. Ultimately I think it’s far from ideal where we are, and we need to have a clean race tomorrow and a sensible strategy to bring both cars home and hope for the best.”

Giorgio Ascanelli: “I am happy to still be one step ahead of my pre-season prediction for where we would be in the order and our mini-battle with Sauber is swinging one way then the other. It seems that so far this weekend we have the upper hand. I suspect our technical package might be a little bit inferior to them at the moment, but today our drivers did a better job. I am more than happy with the work the team here, in the factory and the wind tunnel has done. It was a major effort for us to come here with a few new components: some of them are a factor of the specific nature of this track and others are down to the development programme, one element of which did not work, thus costing us some time yesterday. Overall, we look a bit better than in Turkey and I hope our race pace will be stronger, with the same level of reliability we have seen so far. Strategically this race will probably not be the standard one-stop and Safety Cars could play a big role. Tyre performance will be critical as the new track surface is making things difficult. Earlier this year the teams requested that Bridgestone produce a rear tyre with more degradation to make the racing more exciting and I expect we will see just that tomorrow, which might shuffle the pack a bit more than usual.”