Formula 1 News

Giancarlo Fisichella angry with Barrichello for 15th position 

Giancarlo Fisichella has blamed Rubens Barrichello for his disappointing result in qualifying for his home Grand Prix. “My qualifying session was ruined by Barrichello,” said the Italian Renault driver, who will start the race from 15th position. “He went off the track, and then pulled back onto the racing line as I was braking for the second Lesmo. I lost 0.27s there, and then more later on as I tried to make up the time. “If you go off track, you cannot just pull back on at any point of the circuit without using your mirrors and ruin other people’s laps…

“I am just so disappointed because the car was working well, and nobody wants to start their home Grand Prix from so far back. It is going to be tough but I won’t give up, and hopefully we can use our pace to make up positions,” added Fisichella, who was outqualified by teammate Heikki Kovalainen for the fifth consecutive time.

Kovalainen was also hindered by Barrichello’s off, but he still managed to qualify in the top ten. He will start from seventh position. “This was another good qualifying effort from the whole team,” he said. “The session went smoothly from my point of view, without any real problems. I was a bit lucky to make it through second qualifying by just a few hundredths of a second after I lost time when Barrichello went off track, but what goes around comes around and we have missed out by very small margins sometimes this year too. For the final laps, the set-up was working well and I was feeling confident with the car. I did a good first lap, and then went for broke on the second one and took a few risks. It didn’t pay off, but I think Kubica was a bit too far in front today anyway, so I didn’t lose any positions. We saw in Turkey that the picture can change between qualifying and the race, and hopefully we will see the same trend tomorrow. I will set my sights on trying to race with BMW.”

source: autosport