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2007 British GP
Team Quotes - Saturday 7 July
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton will start Sunday's Santander British Grand Prix from pole position. It is the 50th pole for the McLaren Mercedes partnership; the fourth for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team this year and the third for Lewis. In an exciting qualifying, he was the last driver on track on a fast lap and set a time of 1:19.997. Fernando Alonso, fastest in both of the first sessions of qualifying, will start Vodafone McLaren Mercedes’ home Grand Prix third on the grid with a time of 1:20.147, only 1.5 tenths of a second behind Lewis.
Ron Dennis: It has been a great day today and both drivers did a fantastic job, just how good will be revealed tomorrow as the race unfolds. We can all enjoy today and tonight, but the race is tomorrow. It has been great to see so many people here supporting the team.
Norbert Haug: You can’t do any better, and it couldn’t get any more exciting. This was a thrilling qualifying and motor racing at its best. Lewis showed an excellent performance achieving pole position in his first ever home Grand Prix which was the 50th for the McLaren Mercedes partnership. Fernando did an excellent job, he is third with less than1.5 tenths of a second behind pole. First and third is a great base for tomorrow’s race, as both of our cars will start on the clean side of the track. This is an ideal result for all the colleagues and their families from Woking and Brixworth who came to attend this race weekend and to see the team in action.
The ING Renault F1 Team this afternoon continued its run of improved qualifying form, as it placed its two cars seventh and eighth on the grid for tomorrow's British Grand Prix at Silverstone. For the third consecutive race, both Renault drivers qualified comfortably inside the top ten, confirming the team's recent progress in terms of outright performance. From the perspective of the constructors' championship, the team's race tomorrow will once again be with BMW – and like last week in Magny-Cours, the two German cars sandwich the two Renaults on the grid. The target will be to maintain the strong qualifying speed of the R27 throughout the race, and to make the most of well-executed race strategies to try and claw back points from BMW by the chequered flag.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: Our aim at the moment is to qualify and race with BMW, and we appear to have achieved that this afternoon. The windy conditions are still making life difficult for the drivers and engineers, but the recent improvements we have made to the driveability of the car have undoubtedly helped us cope with this factor. As always, tomorrow's race will be hard-fought, and tough for both the drivers and the cars on such a punishing circuit. But I feel confident that we can race strongly all the way through, to achieve a good result.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Engine Track Operations: Silverstone is well-known as a selective circuit for the cars, so it is not particularly surprising to see the top ten positions on the grid filled by just five teams. Judging by recent form, the unexpected factor is to see Toyota among those top five teams – and Ralf, in particular, could be troublesome in tomorrow's race starting from the third row. This is a tough circuit in every respect: for the engines, for the chassis under high aerodynamic load, and physically for the drivers. We will need to be at our best in every area tomorrow afternoon, to try and maximise our points score behind the two fastest teams – and to try and pick up any crumbs that should fall from their top table, should they encounter problems in the race.
Jean Todt: This was a closely fought qualifying session the outcome of which was only decided in the final second. As we expected, the two top teams are very evenly matched as can be seen from the very small gaps between the times. When assessing this qualifying, we obviously have to consider the usual unknowns as regards strategy. Tomorrow, the decisive factors will be the work of the team and the drivers, the timing of the pit stops and car and tyre performance over the distance. For our part, we will do our utmost as usual. This race is a key moment in the fight for both championships and with all our heart we want to bring home the best result possible.
Luca Baldisserri: Yet another very exciting qualifying, decided at the death. A shame for Kimi who made a small slip right at the end which probably cost him pole position. The race looks to be very open. We have a very quick car, especially over a long run and that means we can be confident about the final outcome of this Grand Prix.
The Honda Racing F1 Team's Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button will start tomorrow's British Grand Prix in 14th and 18th positions after a disappointing qualifying in front of the team's home crowd.
Rubens got a good run in the first of the three shoot-out sessions and made it through to Q2, during which he was able to extract the maximum performance from the car today. Jenson's Q1 was frustrated by traffic and a yellow flag and he was unable to get a clean lap to make it through to Q2.
Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director: Rubens gave it everything he had, so it is somewhat frustrating to finish 14th when we were only 0.2 sec from a top ten position. That's the way it goes nowadays because the field is so tight. Jenson was quite happy with his car balance but lifted for Anthony who had spun off and therefore did not make it through to Q2.
For the ninth Grand Prix of the season both BMW Sauber F1 Team drivers will start in the top ten. In Silverstone Robert Kubica claimed fifth on the grid for the British Grand Prix while his team-mate, Nick Heidfeld, was ninth.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): During the third free practice this morning we had to change Robert's gearbox. The fact he lost no more than 20 minutes running time after such a major repair was due to a brilliant effort from the mechanics. To make up for some of the lost track time Robert did two outings in Q1. I am very pleased he made it to fifth position under these circumstances. Nick on the other hand didn't manage to get a perfect lap and will start from ninth. He will have an awful lot of work to do.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): All in all it is a good result. Again, for the ninth time this season, we managed to qualify both drivers in the top ten. We adapted Robert's programme after he lost some time in the morning session due to a gearbox problem, and based on this his performance was great. With fifth on the grid we can be very satisfied. Meanwhile Nick did not find a perfect lap in the last part of qualifying.
Panasonic Toyota Racing is celebrating its best performance of 2007 after today's qualifying session for the British Grand Prix. Ralf Schumacher posted the 6th quickest lap, his best result of the season, with Jarno Trulli 10th. That means the team will line up with two cars in the top ten of the grid for the first time since April in Malaysia. Toyota had a successful day of practice to kick off the weekend yesterday and that form continued into qualifying. After the poor weather that has been a feature of the week, the sun finally broke through the clouds at Silverstone today with air temperatures around 20° Celsius. Both drivers made it into Q3 without problems and Ralf made the top six in every session. Now the team will bid to make the most of these positions as it pushes for a strong result in tomorrow's race.
Pascal Vasselon – Senior General Manager Chassis: This has been a good weekend for us, in line with the test we did here a couple of weeks ago where we saw we were higher up the pecking order. So far everything has gone smoothly, we have had no reliability issues and we have been able to improve our set-up session after session. Ralf has done an especially good job throughout the weekend and his position in Q3 is a deserved reward. Jarno also did well to make Q3 but he has been slightly less comfortable with the set-up, particularly for qualifying trim. But we are confident in our strategies and both drivers should be in good shape for the race. Both tyre specifications are able to do the job here so, while the option had a clear advantage as usual in qualifying, there is no particular strategy required to manage the difference between them tomorrow. There is nothing particular about this circuit that has made us perform well but since Barcelona we've seen that in this downforce window our car is better than it is at medium to low downforce tracks like Indianapolis and Montreal. Even in Magny-Cours where our race was destroyed by incidents, our pace was where we expected it to be. Now we can look forward to a good race tomorrow.
Christian Horner: Eleventh and twelfth is a frustrating place to start, especially given how close the field is. Less than a tenth would have put Mark into the third qualifying session, but unfortunately it didn't happen today, so we need to make sure we've got a good strategy for tomorrow.
Fabrice Lom, Renault, Principal Engineer, Track Support: We are slightly disappointed today after qualifying. We missed Q3 for the second Grand Prix running. We were pretty satisfied after the third practice this morning, as we were quite quick, but it seems all the teams improved a lot in between Q1 and Q2. It's very tight as we missed entering in Q3 by 0.05 sec. Everything worked well on the technical side, we will have to work hard tonight on our strategy to make the most of our eleventh and twelfth positions on the grid tomorrow for the race, as our target will be to score some points.
Qualifying for Sunday's British Grand Prix concluded unsatisfactorily for the AT&T Williams team today. Alex Wurz ended his afternoon at the close of Q2 in 13th place, missing out on a slot in the top ten shoot out by just under two tenths of a second. For the first time this season, Nico Rosberg was knocked out in Q1 and will start tomorrow's race from P17 following a significant loss of power on his FW29, the cause of which is currently under investigation.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: After a decent performance in all the practice sessions, that was obviously a pretty disappointing qualifying. It was good for Alex that he made it into Q2 and 13th. Nico's car misfired in Q1, so we are now checking all the wiring looms and electrical boxes to identify and then fix the problem. Looking ahead to the race tomorrow, we will work out a good strategy tonight to allow the drivers to fight from their starting positions.
Giorgio Ascanelli: I thought it would be difficult to get into Q2 and fifteenth and sixteenth is about what I hoped we could achieve. Scott did a great job this afternoon and he was on it. As I said before, the pack is very close in terms of lap times and we have to be happy with this performance. Unfortunately, we had a gearbox problem with Tonio, which at the moment I assume is different from anything we have seen so far. Therefore we will have to analyse it now and I am sure it will be fixed for tomorrow.
The Spyker team will start tomorrow's British Grand Prix with Adrian Sutil and Christijan Albers in 20th and 22nd positions respectively.
Adrian used the earlier free practice session to fine-tune his set-up for Qualifying, in which he completed three runs on the softer Bridgestone Potenza tyre option. The 24-year-old German finished the session one second from the top ten, outqualifying the Super Aguri of Takuma Sato by just 0.03secs to move off the back row of the grid. Christijan had a productive morning session, however was frustrated not to better this time in the afternoon's Qualifying.
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: A reasonable Qualifying, with our positions pretty much what we expected. Adrian did a good lap to qualify in front of one of the Super Aguris and we now have to look to get a consistent race with two cars to the finish.
Super Aguri experienced a difficult day. Anthony set a good fastest lap time during the morning's third Free Practice session, however pace and luck were not on the team's side for this afternoon's Qualifying.
Graham Taylor, Sporting Director: Poor. It's been getting tighter and tighter all year. This is one of the bigger circuits, so you'd think that there would be a bit more latitude, but there wasn't. Our cars did not have the performance today and again our Qualifying session was not error free.
McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has wowed his home crowds with a scintillating pole position lap on Bridgestone's medium compound Potenza at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.
The grey skies of Friday gave way to blue skies on Saturday and the lap times on both Bridgestone's hard and medium Potenzas continued to fall. Hamilton's pole lap of 1min 19.997secs, set in the dying seconds of the final qualifying session, was over two tenths faster than last year's pole.
Kimi Raikkonen will start tomorrow's 60 lap race on the front row alongside Hamilton. The Ferrari driver was quickest in the morning practice session, with a time of 1min 19.751secs set on the hard compound Potenza. Starting from third place on the grid tomorrow will be Fernando Alonso, who set the day's fastest lap with a 1min 19.152secs in Q2, also on the hard compound.
With less cloud and wind than yesterday, teams were able to undertake more meaningful running on the hard and medium compound Bridgestone Potenzas in the morning practice session. The hard compound Bridgestone Potenza should offer a more consistent performance than the medium compound in tomorrow's race, but the close lap times between the two should mean stint length variations between pit stops.
Kees van de Grint, Bridgestone Motorsport Head of Track Engineering Operations: This was an exciting qualifying session, with a close fought battle between four drivers for pole. The weather was good today, and the home crowd was able to cheer a British pole winner at the home of British motorsport. Tyre performance was good, with a slight track improvement meaning there was less graining. Both compounds of Bridgestone Potenza had an advantage in a particular sector, but overall there was very little to choose between the two on lap time. Pole position was set by Lewis Hamilton on the medium compound, but today's fastest lap was set by Fernando Alonso on the hard compound. This lap was over a second quicker than last year's fastest, and pole was faster than last year too, showing that we have two high performance racing tyres here this weekend.
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