23/07/2011
NEWS STORY
The Qualifying session for tomorrow's German Grand Prix took place today in chilly conditions at the Nurburgring. Timo Glock will start his home race from 20th position on the grid, while Jerome D'Ambrosio qualified 22nd.
During this morning's third and final Free Practice session both drivers continued working to finalise the set-up for qualifying and the race. With an air temperature of 12°C and a track temperature of 19°C, the main difficulty again was to get heat into the tyres.
Timo and Jerome were the first drivers out on track at the start of the qualifying hour, which was held in very similar temperatures to this morning - air 14°C, track 22°C. Both drivers completed a total of 12 laps each using the Option tyre and set their fastest times in the second stint.
Timo Glock: "The car was not easy to drive today, by any means. We had the same problem in Silverstone in similarly windy conditions and our car is just very sensitive to that. We have to understand why because without the little mistakes, too much oversteer and being too much over the limit to trying to get the maximum out of the car, we could have been four or five tenths quicker. I was pushing hard and I drove a good lap I think. I just want to get more out of the car. We still managed to split the Lotus cars and in better conditions I think we could have a good race, so we will see what tomorrow brings. The fans have been great here and thanks to them for their support in my home race."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "I think it was a pretty good qualifying session for me today. I didn't quite manage to get the maximum out of the car on my fastest lap, and as we have to use the same set-up for the race tomorrow it wasn't ideal for qualifying anyway. But I'm very pleased to have had a smooth Saturday; we've had no rain and no bad luck. As a result we have a good consistent pace so I'm looking forward to tomorrow."
John Booth, Team Principal: "We spent a lot of time last night going through all of the information we had collected during Friday, paying particular attention to the aerodynamic data. As a result of this, we made some quite significant changes to both cars overnight. The drivers were happy with these and were able to work on further set-up improvements during FP3. We seem to be starting to understand where some of our issues lie, particularly during the last two race weekends when we've experienced cold track temperatures and windy conditions. These aren't suiting our car at present but we will keep working to solve these issues. We chose to do two long runs during the qualifying session to take advantage of the Option tyres that are being so consistent. Both drivers did a good job today managing the traffic and we achieved a good result, ending up with one car in front of a Lotus. We are happy with today's performance and we look forward to tomorrow's race."
To check out our Nurburgring qualifying gallery, click here.