13/09/2008
NEWS STORY
The whole of qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix on the high speed Monza circuit was in wet conditions, which produced a mixed grid. Robert Kubica missed making it into the top ten by just 21 thousandths of a second and was 11th. Nick Heidfeld made it into qualifying for the final action packed session, but was unhappy with the grip level and ended up tenth.
Nick Heidfeld: The conditions were quite difficult during qualifying, but in the beginning it went pretty well for me. Once I made it into the top ten of qualifying I was expecting more. The last laps were disappointing. Instead of more grip I got less. We now have to figure out why this happened.
Robert Kubica: We were a bit unlucky today as the gap to position 10 and the third qualifying session was very narrow. We put a new set of tyres on the car for the second qualifying session, as we planned not to make a pit stop in the session. You need two or three laps to make the tyres work. The track dried up after the first laps, but then it started to rain heavily so unfortunately I was not able to improve the lap times. Congratulations to Torro Rosso and Sebastian Vettel for their first pole position.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): That was the most action packed qualifying I can remember. Under these weather conditions it was a lottery. Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel and Toro Rosso, who did a brilliant job under these conditions. If you look at the result you find some of the top drivers down in the rankings, and of course we are not satisfied with our grid positions of ten and 11. Today it was vital to go out at the right moment and set a quick lap time with warm tyres. We were not able to do this.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): Following our strong performance in dry conditions yesterday, we are obviously disappointed with positions ten and 11. Robert didn't make it to Q3 because the rain was heavier towards the end of second qualifying. The grid looks very different to what we are used to, which means we can expect a very interesting race tomorrow. We obviously have to see what strategies the different drivers have chosen.