06/10/2007
NEWS STORY
The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team today had a fairly disappointing Qualifying session at the Shanghai International Circuit. After scoring its first point at last week's Japanese Grand Prix, the team had been hoping for more this weekend, however a combination of a slippery track and a car balance set up in anticipation of tomorrow's expected rain conspired to put Adrian Sutil and Sakon Yamamoto in 21st and 22nd positions respectively for tomorrow's Chinese Grand Prix.
Both Adrian and Sakon made two runs on the softer Bridgestone Potenza option available this weekend and set their fastest runs on their second outings. Adrian's time was 0.4secs from the next fastest car of Takuma Sato, with Sakon just behind.
With heavy rain however predicted for tomorrow's 56 lap race, conditions could be very similar to those in which the team secured that crucial one point last week.
Adrian Sutil: We were hoping for maybe one more place today. The lap was OK and the car balance seemed good, but no one made a mistake and I think this was our maximum today. We just need more top speed as we are losing a lot on the straights, although hopefully in the race we will pick up some more places. In general I don't think that this circuit suits the car and I'll be hoping for a wet race tomorrow.
Sakon Yamamoto: This is a bit disappointing for us. My car balance didn't really improve from yesterday and we tried to do our best, but the lap time showed we still have a lack of speed. I don't know what to expect for tomorrow but as we think it will be a wet race, we might be OK. We know we can do better in these conditions, so we are going to look at the data and hope for more tomorrow.
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer: Today was reasonably disappointing as we are not as competitive as we have been over the past few races. But with the expected conditions tomorrow, we compromised the set up to take into account the predicted rain and I am sure we will be more competitive in the race as we always are.
To check out our Shanghai qualifying gallery, click here