28/07/2012
NEWS STORY
The Marussia F1 Team's Charles Pic had it all under control in Budapest today, where he delivered another impressive qualifying performance to lead the team's challenge in tomorrow's Hungarian Grand Prix. He will start from 21st position on the grid, directly in front of his team-mate Timo Glock, who had a less happy qualifying as he was unable to achieve a clean lap.
After having to play catch-up in this morning's Free Practice 3 session due to not running the Pirelli P-Zero Soft option tyre yesterday, both drivers were much happier with the set-up of their cars going into qualifying. Timo's runs had looked promising but he hit traffic on the first and a couple of mistakes in the second run cost him dearly.
Charles Pic: "On the whole, I am quite happy with my qualifying today. On the first set of Soft tyres it was not easy as I made and adjustment to the front flap and experienced a lot of vibration. On the second set I was much happier with the balance of my car but I did not get a clean lap, especially in sector one, much like Hockenheim. It was very hot today and the race will also be tough, but I hope we have the chance to improve tomorrow as is often the case on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it."
Timo Glock: "Not a great qualifying for my side. The Free Practice 3 session was quite good but for some reason we didn't make the right changes between the two sessions. In qualifying the car was more nervous again under braking and turning in, so it was definitely not the right direction to take. On my best lap on the first run I hit traffic. On the second run my lap was not so good; I made a couple of mistakes due to the front wheel locking and I lost the rear end, so all in all it's not great today."
John Booth, Team Principal: "FP3 was quite a productive session on both sides of the garage. We'd identified overnight that tyre temperatures were key to achieving performance today and some changes we made overnight appeared to work as we experienced improved warm-up on the Medium tyre. Our experience on the Soft tyre was limited due to yesterday's weather conditions and perhaps this has hurt us slightly with the balance, particularly on Timo's car going into qualifying. Consequently we are disappointed with where we stand relative to the cars immediately ahead of us, but we are clearly moving away from the team behind. Operationally, we need to look at where we placed the cars on the track in the first run of qualifying and learn from it, to resolve the issue seen in Timo's first run. We know we're much stronger in the race and tomorrow will hopefully present the opportunity to keep moving forward."
Check out our Qualifying gallery, here.