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2007 Australia GP
Team Quotes - Saturday 17 March
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton will start tomorrow's Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne from second and fourth positions respectively after setting times of 1m26.493 and 1m26.755.
Why does Saturday morning practice remain useful for the team when Friday's two sessions have been extended?
"The track conditions are continuously evolving and consequently the team always want as much running as possible. Also overnight the engineers have had a chance to reflect on the information obtained during Friday's practice - for an example today significant set-up changes were made to Fernando's car which were evaluated during practice.
Did the wet track conditions in practice affect the programme?
The wet track conditions yesterday and this morning have affected our planned programme. In addition there was a significant red flag interruption during the second session yesterday but these things happen and you work around them.
What will happen to the cars before the race?
Immediately after qualifying both cars go into Parc Ferme conditions. However the team are allowed to conduct a number of safety checks. The cars go into Parc Ferme overnight and are returned to the teams at 07.30 Sunday morning.
Ron Dennis: "Both drivers have continued their great work with the team throughout this weekend. Fernando clearly is an invaluable asset to the team and nobody within the organisation has anything but praise for Lewis' efforts so far in his first Grand Prix weekend. We are all looking forward to the race
tomorrow."
Norbert Haug: "Of course it was very important to start in the top five in this year's first Grand Prix, so I'm very happy with Fernando's and Lewis' grid
positions. The team did a very good job today and both drivers were first class my compliments to both of them. The race tomorrow will be very challenging as I think more than three teams will be fighting for podium finishes."
The ING Renault F1 Team achieved mixed results in this opening qualifying session of the 2007 Formula 1 season. In sunny conditions at Melbourne's Albert Park circuit, Giancarlo Fisichella finished sixth while team-mate Heikki Kovalainen finished 13th as he got his first taste of the high- pressure knockout qualifying format. The team had expected a challenging hour, as the first lap pace of the R27 during the weekend has failed to match the speed the car has demonstrated in race conditions. This proved to be the case, with Giancarlo ultimately slowed by traffic on his fastest lap, while Heikki failed to get through the second part of the session. However, the encouraging race pace shown during the weekend means the team is hopeful of being in contention for a podium finish tomorrow afternoon.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: Giancarlo's qualifying position more or less reflects our competitiveness over a single lap at this early stage of the season. Having said that, there is no doubt that he could have gone quicker had he not encountered traffic on his fastest lap. Although he was definitely impeded and it cost him time, it was certainly not deliberate. As for Heikki, he experienced the full fury of an F1 qualifying session for the first time. He lost track time yesterday and this morning with minor technical problems, and I am sure that without them, he would have achieved a much stronger result something we are confident he will do next time out in Malaysia. However, our focus now is on the race. We are certainly more confident in our race pace than we were before qualifying, and look forward to a much improved showing tomorrow afternoon.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations: We had our first insight into the relative, pure performance of the teams this afternoon and, much as expected, it confirmed our position as outsiders rather than favourites. We were pleased to see no repeat of the fuel pressure problems encountered yesterday, and our top speeds suggest that the RS27 V8 engine is performing well. We have prepared thoroughly for the race in spite of the problems encountered this weekend, and we hope to see our relative performance improve tomorrow afternoon.
First race of the season and first pole position for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen, making his debut as a Maranello team driver in a Grand Prix. This is the seventh time a Ferrari driver starts the Australian Grand Prix from pole and the 187th in the history of the Prancing Horse in Formula 1. For Kimi, this was his twelfth career pole.
Jean Todt: A bitter sweet start to the first weekend of the 2007 Championship. On the one hand there is satisfaction with pole for our new arrival, Kimi Raikkonen, while on the other hand, disappointment because of the gearbox problem that affected Felipe Massa in Q2. Up to that point, he had driven impeccably all weekend. Today, Ferrari showed it has the potential to be a front runner on a day that confirmed the pecking order we had seen during winter testing. The key parameters for the race are now reduced to three- strategy, reliability and performance - given that everyone has the same Bridgestone tyres. Today, we had the performance but not the reliability. Now we have to work out how to get the most out of the sporting regulations, particularly the one concerning usage of the two types of tyre.
Luca Baldisserri: A great qualifying from Kimi, straight to pole on his debut with us. His car performed faultlessly as was his driving. However, we are very disappointed for Felipe who, because of a gearbox problem, was pretty much unable to take part in qualifying. Already, at the end of free practice we had seen that there was a faulty component on the F2007's gearbox and, as a precaution it was changed. Unfortunately, the problem reoccurred, which forced him to stop at the side of the track. Now we must look at the situation carefully to see how to remedy it and to try and make the best of Felipe's start position which is definitely not up to our expectations. As for Kimi, we will try to make the most of pole position, in the knowledge that we can expect a tough race, where reliability, strategy and team work will be, as usual, crucial.
The Honda Racing F1 Team experienced a difficult qualifying session in Melbourne today as the Formula One teams prepare for tomorrow's season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Jenson Button ended the day 14th whilst team-mate Rubens Barrichello was knocked-out during the first of the three sessions and will line up 17th for the 58-lap race.
Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director: "We are obviously disappointed with the results from today's qualifying. The performance of the RA107 car is far from where we want and expect it to be. The drivers got the most of the car that they could today. We are working flat out at the factory to improve the car for the coming races."
Following on from a trouble free morning practice session, the BMW Sauber F1 Team had the best qualifying result of its one year life. Nick Heidfeld will start the Australian Grand Prix from third on the grid, while Robert Kubica will be in fifth for the opening race of the season.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): This was very pleasing. It was the strongest qualifying our BMW Sauber F1 Team has had so far. With this we have confirmed the performances we put in during testing. A big compliment is due to all the technicians in Munich and Hinwil. Our chances for the race are now very good.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): This was excellent and we are very pleased with today's result. From the second and third rows of the grid we can achieve a good result with our race strategy. All the sessions of this first qualifying of the season were very exciting for us, and the pit crew worked really well. For Nick the timing of his last run with the softer compound worked perfectly. However, after the last pit stop Robert missed the chance to do the final lap with the same tyres by just one second. The timing was very tight because we really wanted to use the very last seconds of the session when the track is at its quickest. On the technical side we had no problems.
Panasonic Toyota Racing will line up with two cars in the top ten of the grid for tomorrow's Australian Grand Prix after a strong first qualifying session of 2007. Following yesterday's rain there were further showers on Saturday morning, affecting the third practice session. Conditions improved and qualifying took place on a dry track under sunny skies. The three sessions were hard fought but both Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher made it into Q3, despite a gearbox control glitch for Ralf at the start of Q2. Jarno will line up 8th on the grid with Ralf 9th. Following a hard winter of testing in Europe this is better than many expected. Toyota will now push to make the most of the positions and finish strongly tomorrow.
Pascal Vasselon Senior General Manager Chassis: These positions aren't exactly where we wanted to be but it's better than we expected given how the weekend has gone so far. We spent most of the morning on race preparation so that is why we showed our capacity to get into the top ten quite late. Ralf did a two-lap run in Q1 when we were on hard tyres and we planned to do several laps to account for possible warm-up problems. With the soft tyres there was obviously only one flying lap possible. In Q2 we had an issue with the gearbox control on Ralf's car that we solved quite quickly. Our target was to get into Q3 and when we achieved it we only had one set of tyres left, which is why we did only one flying lap. It would be an advantage to have two sets of tyres so we lost time. Still, it's a decent start and Jarno and Ralf did well. It will be interesting to see how teams manage the two different tyres tomorrow. One is difficult to handle with huge degradation and the other is consistent and quick. We are in a good position so we will push for a strong result.
Christian Horner: It was a very good effort by Mark and it's positive that he's starting in a good grid position at his home race. He certainly demonstrated that he's a cool customer in qualifying. David was unlucky not to finish his flying lap in Q1, which would have comfortably put him in to Q2. He's going to have a more challenging afternoon tomorrow, but he's got a good track record here and today's given positive signs that we're moving in the right direction.
Fabrice Lom, Renault, Principal Engineer, Track Support: The qualifying session went very smoothly for us and the engine performed well. As expected the competition was extremely close. We are sorry that David didn't make it past Q1, but we are pleased by the pace that Mark showed through the different stages. He was very impressive in Q2 particularly. For the first GP of this new partnership we set the seventh fastest lap time and we are well up the top speed charts too. Its a very promising result and we hope to confirm this good start in tomorrow's race.
The AT&T Williams team was disappointed not to participate in the final qualifying session at Albert Park today and the team will start 12th and 15th on tomorrow's grid, but do expect to show a stronger relative race performance. The team has worked hard to improve poor reliability during 2006 and hopes to have both cars finishing well tomorrow.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: It was obviously a disappointing qualifying session not to be able to get either cars into the top ten as we'd thought we had enough pace to do that from the practice sessions. We will need to look carefully at the data tonight to see if we can squeeze anything more from the cars for tomorrow's race. Our main target tomorrow is to be reliable and see if we can score some points.
Spyker has concluded its first official Qualifying session for the Australian Grand Prix with Adrian Sutil and Christijan Albers in 21st and 22nd positions respectively.
With just 80 laps of the 5.3km Albert Park circuit under his belt following Friday and Saturday's free practice, Adrian Sutil recorded a best of 1:29.339, just 0.2secs from Vitantonio Liuzzi and 0.8 secs from David Coulthard.
Christijan Albers was however disappointed with his ultimate Qualifying performance following a tough start to the day. The twenty-seven year old Dutchman had only limited track time in the morning's free practice when Spyker technicians had to change his gearbox after he lost first gear halfway through the one hour session. Although Christijan was able to get a couple of laps in at the end of the hour, his experience of the softer tyre selected for Qualifying was limited. As a result, he found it difficult to find a balance and push through the faster corners and finished Qualifying with a best time of 1:31.932 after seven laps.
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: 'We pretty much qualified where we expected and with the time difference we expected. As far as Adrian is concerned, the day went to plan. We ran on the hard and soft tyres this morning and went for the softer compound for Qualifying. Unfortunately with Christijan this morning, we lost first gear on his first run and although he got out at the end of session, his running was seriously curtailed. This affected him quite badly in Qualifying as he had no real experience of the softer tyre and was unable to get the most out of the car. But the difference to the cars in front is not that great and we'll look to ensure that we have a good race pace to be able to pick up any positions we can in the race tomorrow.'
Graham Taylor, Sporting Director: Fantastic news for the team. Again the weather interrupted the preparation for the final Free Practice session, but we got some good running in at the end and I think we showed ourselves to be in a racing state of mind. Come Qualifying, we tried to keep the boys as calm as possible, including ourselves, and we knew that if everything went our way we had a shot at getting through to Q3, but we weren't really expecting it. For Anthony to miss out on Q3 is the only disappointing thing about Qualifying today. To get Taku through to Q3 and to finish in the top 10 at the first race of our second season in the World Championship is just astounding. Everyone in the team, and back home at the factory in Leafield, did a fantastic job; the drivers drove very well and the Engineers got the cars balanced well. I would also like to thank all of our sponsors and partners Honda and Bridgestone Potenza.
Kimi Raikkonen has taken the first pole position of the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship. The Finn was fastest in the first and final qualifying sessions as well as the morning's practice session. Fernando Alonso will start Sunday's Grand Prix at Albert Park from second on the grid, the Spaniard was the fastest in the second qualifying session, setting the fastest lap time of the day. Nick Heidfeld will start from third on the grid with Lewis Hamilton alongside him. Takuma Sato impressed with tenth position for Super Aguri in their second season.
Kees van de Grint, Bridgestone Motorsport Head of Track Engineering Operations: "It pleases me that seven different teams are in the top ten confirming that we have provided all of the teams with similar information. Judging by the lap times shown in Qualifying 2 we could be in for an exciting race. It was good to see that our predictions with the different compounds proved correct. The medium tyre did everything we expected, providing reasonable grip with good consistency. The soft tyre was definitely quicker by a margin, as was shown by everyone in the top ten using it. How to use the two different specifications in the race will certainly keep the teams' strategists very busy. As is normal with a softer tyre the degradation is higher, although the amount of graining we have seen with the track today was less than yesterday, as the track has improved."
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