12/09/2009
NEWS STORY
Brawn GP's Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button qualified their Brawn-Mercedes cars on the third row of the grid for Sunday's Italian Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza with fifth and sixth positions respectively in today's qualifying session.
Rubens and Jenson ran at the front of the field throughout the hour with the BGP 001 cars performing well on both the prime and option tyres. Progressing easily through Q1 and Q2, with Jenson topping the timesheets in the second session, the pair favoured the harder prime tyre for the final session.
Both drivers completed just one run in Q3 with three flying laps to set their quickest time. With heavy fuel loads, Rubens and Jenson both put in great laps for fifth and sixth positions with just fifteen-hundredths of a second separating their times.
Rubens Barrichello: "That was probably one of my best qualifying laps at Monza and I really enjoyed myself out there. We had the ability to be on pole today but strategically we had to consider the pace of the KERS cars off the line and so we put a lot of fuel in the car and focused on what was right for our race. I had a great lap with the fuel onboard and fifth position is the best that I could have achieved so I'm really pleased that we got everything possible out of the car. It will be interesting to see the fuel figures but I'm confident that we're in a good position. I just love racing here so I'm really looking forward to the race tomorrow."
Jenson Button: "I'm really happy with sixth position today. Rubens and I have been so close on lap times all weekend and he's ended up just fifteen-hundredths ahead of me which is the difference between getting your head down on the straights. I obviously didn't do it enough! We got the best out of the car today and it felt good on the heavy fuel load which is important because it's not just about qualifying, you have to consider your race. It's been a positive day and I'm confident that we can have a good race."
Ross Brawn: "Qualifying saw an excellent performance from Rubens, Jenson and the team today to put us in a good position for the race tomorrow. Rubens and Jenson drove extremely well in Q3 with our chosen one-stop strategy to secure fifth and sixth positions and the closeness of their lap times shows that they achieved everything possible from the car. We have the majority of the KERS cars just ahead of us so provided our drivers get a good start, there is everything to play for in the race tomorrow."