Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

“We’ve looked very fast all weekend, and the car’s felt great. Obviously, the Mercedes-Benz engine is the best suited to this circuit, and our car’s aerodynamic package also works well here. “On my first run in Q3, I was the first driver into Turn 14, and the track was drying but still a bit wet, so I didn’t push hard enough and lost ground – maybe half a second. “I thought we could have got pole, but I went a bit wide at La Source on my final run. There was one little patch of rain over Turn One, so it was a bit slippery, and I lost about three and a half tenths there. But I was able to extract some good time from the tyres in the second and third sectors – and that’s where I made up the time I lost in sector one. “Still, it’s not essential to have pole here – I still feel like I’m in a good position. There’s a very long straight from Eau Rouge to the top of the hill, and it’s quite tricky to stay ahead of a chasing car, even if you’re on pole. I’m hopeful of getting a good start tomorrow, and we’ll take it from there. “For tomorrow’s race, and in Monza, we need to capitalise on the fact that our package appears to be very competitive. Tomorrow will be a tough race, but we’ll keep pushing.”

“I’m a bit disappointed. We were very quick yesterday and had decent pace this morning too. I don’t know where the speed went this afternoon. I was around 3-4kph quicker yesterday than I was this afternoon with less fuel. There are a lot of straights in Monza, so it was quite costly. But we have a good race car, so let’s see what tomorrow brings. With high fuel it will be different around here and we’re seeing different approaches, for example McLaren are running one driver on lower wing and the other on higher wing, so we’ll see how it works on high fuel. It might be quite slippery at the beginning of the race. We’re not the fastest here, we know that, but we’ll see what we can do.”

“Pole position at last! And it’s come at the best possible place, here in front of all the Ferrari fans! We managed to save two sets of new soft tyres for Q3 and so we were able to post a time immediately, before giving it absolutely everything on the second run. In fact, the time on the first run was good enough. The team and I have been without a pole for too long and two Ferraris in the top three is a fantastic result. At this track, the car really gets a hard time so we must try and keep all the parameters under control. We must make the most of this opportunity to bring home a lot of points: we will try and get a good start and tackle the first chicane as cleanly as possible, which is always difficult on the first lap. We needed this result: coming off the back of a weekend like Spa, which had raised some doubts about the car, but here it has improved a lot day after day. It would be nice to get a one-two tomorrow in front of our fantastic fans: I feel at home here, just like in Spain.”

“Today I could have taken pole, but maybe in Q3, we did not adopt the best strategy. In Q2, my time on the soft tyres came on the third lap, so for the next part, we opted to do a series of three laps, but things did not go as we had wanted. Then on my second run, I did not manage to improve enough to take pole. All the same, it was a good qualifying and I am pleased with the performance of the car, which improved yet again today. We changed various things compared to yesterday morning which saw us become more competitive. I have never been very lucky at Monza, but tomorrow I will be starting from a good grid position. It is very motivating, especially when you see how happy are our fans, and it gives you a little bit extra. It would be nice to reward them for it…”

“Our car feels good, and I think our pace has been good all weekend. I just wish I could be a bit further up. We ran used tyres at the start of Q3 and used tyres at the end, and two of the cars ahead of me put their best times in at the start of the session when it was dry. “For my final run, there’d been a bit of rain in sector one, so I lost about three and a half tenths to my previous best Q3 lap in the first sector. I was down quite a bit but was able to pull it back in the middle and last sectors, which were quite competitive. I’m reasonably happy, but would have liked to have been a bit higher up. “In qualifying, you obviously want to push the car to the limit, but it’s very tricky with this asphalt to see which parts of the surface are wet or dry. And, when you’re pushing as hard as you can, it’s very difficult to find the limit of the tyre in the wet. If you hit a wet patch, you’re off. “Still, I’m fifth – on the good side of the grid – and in this sort of weather, anything can happen, so it’s pretty exciting. That’s the way it is, but I still think we can have a very good race with our car tomorrow.”

“Seventh place is definitely the best performance that was possible for us today so both I and the team can be pleased with that. However we obviously want to be further up the grid so we shouldn’t get too used to being happy with such results. In race trim, we are probably a little stronger than in qualifying, so I can hopefully gain a place or two tomorrow if something happens amongst the top six guys, and look to achieve some good points.”

“I was pretty happy with today’s qualifying. It’s tight round here and trying to get it all together is not the easiest; when you’re pushing hard on the chicanes it’s easy to over cook them. The guys did a good job. We were up and down with the wing levels, but everyone’s in the same position trying to get the car set up in the best way for Monza. It didn’t help that we got the car back quite late after we stopped out on track in P3, but we stayed cool. I didn’t get many laps on the option tyre, but the engineers were able to look at what Sebastian found out on them and the team worked closely to give me some information, which helped me. The Ferraris are flying today; it should be a good race.”

It was a very, very positive qualifying and I really enjoyed driving here today – the car feels good, I really enjoy the track, so you might call it harmony! This gave me a lot of confidence and meant I was able to put in a mega lap in Q3, even though I could have been quicker in sector 1. Overall I am really pleased and I must thank the factory who developed a great aero package that works well on the straights for top speed, but is also perfectly balanced under cornering. This afternoon’s performance means I am now really looking forward to the prospect of the race tomorrow.

„Wir wussten bereits im Voraus, dass wir heute bei einem normal verlaufenden Qualifying nicht auf mehr als Platz sieben hoffen durften. Ich lieferte mir einen engen Kampf mit Mercedes und Williams. Im Q2 gelang mir gleich mit meinem ersten Turn eine gute Zeit, sodass ich mir einen Satz Option-Reifen für den entscheidenden Durchgang aufsparen konnte. Im Top-Ten-Qualifying blieb ich im ersten Versuch nur zwei Zehntelsekunden über meiner Bestzeit. Ich entschloss mich daher zu einem Boxenstopp, um bei meinem letzten Angriff zwei gezeitete Runden fahren zu können. Leider konnte ich meine Zeit aber nicht bestätigen oder gar verbessern. Letztlich fehlten mir zwei Hundertstel zu Platz sieben. Mein Startplatz ist sicher nicht ideal und die Autos um mich herum sind äußerst konkurrenzfähig, aber morgen wird es ein langer Nachmorgen für alle. Ich hoffe, ich kann die sich bietenden Gelegenheiten optimal nutzen.“

The times have been so close today that we knew qualifying would be tight as well. All the same we were very, very near to getting into Q3 – just a couple of hundredths of a second – so we can be happy with the performance. Starting P11 means we will get to start on a new set of tyres and the clean side of the grid, which can be an advantage. I think we’re still looking good for a points’ finish tomorrow.

It’s been quite difficult for me to find an ideal set-up here despite the fact that at I am at home on this track as I won here last year. I think we hoped for better, around P7, which should have been possible, but we have not quite optimised our potential so far. However, the race still provides plenty of opportunity tomorrow and I am sure we have the possibility of a good result.

“I am reasonably happy with my performance, because I think I got almost the maximum out of the car and I am quite confident that we can have a strong race tomorrow. The important thing is that generally this weekend, we seem to be a bit more competitive than we were at Spa and in previous races, which is a positive step. It proves the updates we brought here are having an effect and that the team is doing a good job. It’s a bit disappointing to be only three hundredths behind Kobayashi, as maybe I could have been thirteenth, but overall it’s not bad.”

“I am obviously not very happy with our qualifying today but my position is probably what my car was giving me. We did not have a perfect balance, especially in some corners where the car was a bit loose, but then we did not come here expecting to achieve a great performance. However the race will be long tomorrow and having been welcomed so nicely by all of my Italian fans, I obviously wish to at least grab some points for them.”

„Ich hatte keine Probleme im Qualifying, und ich denke, bezüglich der Rundenzeit und Position war es das, was heute möglich war. Michael (Schumacher) ist als Zwölfter nur einen Platz vor mir, aber er war drei Zehntelsekunden schneller. Das ist ein großer Abstand. Verglichen mit dem ersten freien Training hier ist die Fahrzeugbalance besser, ich habe mehr Grip und mehr Vertrauen in das Auto. Selbstverständlich werde ich morgen versuchen, Punkte zu holen.”

“I am quite satisfied with the way things went this afternoon, after having some problems yesterday. Today, we also made a few changes to the car and I think we ended up pretty much where we expected to be. I am not sure what we can do in the race, as yesterday I did not manage to do a long run on high fuel to see what the tyre degradation will be like. So, it will be a new experience, but I’m looking forward to it anyway.”

„Das war heute ein hartes Qualifying. Nur sehr knappe Zeitabstände entschieden über den Sprung in die Top Ten. Mein Renault R30 präsentierte sich heute nicht so konkurrenzfähig wie noch in Belgien. Für mich gab es heute viel zu lernen, wie ich bei diesem niedrigen Abtriebsniveau den richtigen Rhythmus finde und das Maximum aus den Reifen heraushole. Zum Zwischenfall mit Timo Glock kann ich nur sagen: Wenn ich ihn wirklich aufgehalten habe, entschuldige ich mich dafür. Als ich aus der Box kam, habe ich keine blauen Flaggen und ihn nicht herankommen sehen. Die Strafversetzung um fünf Ränge macht die Aufgabe für mich morgen noch ein bisschen schwieriger. Aber morgen ist ein neuer Tag. Und wie wir in Spa gesehen haben: Es kann viel passieren.“

„Das Qualifying war hart für mich. Seit dem dritten freien Training heute morgen habe ich mich mit dem Auto nicht mehr wohl gefühlt. Es hat sich einfach nicht mehr verhalten wie am Freitag. Wir sind mehr Abtrieb gefahren, aber es ist uns nicht gelungen, einen guten Kompromiss zu finden zwischen einem sich stabil verhaltenden Heck und einer guten Höchstgeschwindigkeit. Ich denke jedenfalls, dass das Auto unter Rennbedingungen besser sein sollte und muss jetzt halt sehen, was ich noch herausholen kann.“

We had a problem in the morning’s session where the car seemed to lose drive and did just a few laps. We did some analysis between the sessions and tried to solve the problem but then in qualifying a similar issue occurred. On the first lap we lost power and then we had to stop completely once I got it back to the garage so I couldn’t get a real flying lap in. It’s a shame but tomorrow’s the most important – we’ve got a good car here and you never know what can happen so we won’t give up until the end.

"It was a great qualifying session for the whole team today because both cars are in front of a Force India and it's looking good for tomorrow. The mechanics sorted out a little problem on the car just before the session, and they've been working really well all weekend so it's good to repay that with the result. It's always good to be able to perform like this at your home race and being best of the new guys means it's been a good day."

"I'm very happy with the performance today. It's been a really good qualifying for both me and Jarno and we're both in a good position for the race tomorrow. I had a great long run in yesterday's practice and I'm looking forward to the race perhaps more than most of the races this season. We've had a few races this season where we haven't got the most out of the Friday sessions, but we did so yesterday, and that, combined with the promise of a dry race tomorrow and a very good race car, means I think we'll put in a strong performance."

“I’m a little disappointed to end qualifying the way we did because we had good pace early on in the session. On the very first run my lap was penalised by Vitaly Petrov, who came out of the pits and pulled out on to the racing line into turn one. On the second run I had good pace and we were ahead of Lotus, but on the third set of tyres there was no grip on the rear. Everyone was able to improve but we didn’t. We have incurred a grid penalty for tomorrow as a result of taking the decision to change our differential, but it was the right thing to do. In general I am happy with the car so we will see what the race brings tomorrow.”

“A good Saturday overall. I’m satisfied with my lap time in qualifying and I extracted the maximum from the car today as our set-up is a compromise for the long race tomorrow. So far the whole team and car has run really smoothly this weekend so I can see a lot of progress in this area and I hope it continues for tomorrow.”

“I am happy that the problem we had yesterday has been fixed and I want to thank the team for the good job they did. In the third practice session, I had traffic on all of my best laps. That’s why I couldn’t manage to be further up. The qualifying was okay and we did the best we could. My teammate and I are close together and we hope to have a good race tomorrow.”

“Yesterday, we couldn’t get enough mileage due to a mechanical problem. In the third practice this morning, we had a problem on the drive shaft and I had to stop before the end of the session. Because of this, I couldn’t use the option tyres in a session before qualifying. I want to thank the team, who managed to get the car ready and prepared it well. We will try to do our best tomorrow and are looking forward to the race.”