With Fernando Alonso
fifth on the grid– one can by now say “as usual” given
this is the only position he has started from all year –
and Felipe Massa in tenth, how can the Scuderia Ferrari
personnel and drivers be talking of improvement in the
performance of the 150º Italia? The answer is that, in a
sport where everything is timed to the nearest
thousandth of a second, some improvements are not so
evident to the naked eye or the casual spectator.
Fernando claimed his performance today confirmed that
there is now some light at the end of the tunnel and
Felipe talked of an improvement thanks to the efforts of
everyone in Maranello. For the Spaniard, one sign of
this improvement is that today in qualifying, he did not
have to sacrifice a set of the faster Soft tyres in Q1
to make sure he progressed to the second session, as the
car was quick enough to make it on the harder slower
tyre. And in Felipe’s case, a better performance was on
the cards but for an honest but unfortunate driver
mistake on his quick lap.
If the drivers in Formula 1 are meant to be the best in
the world, then the people providing them with a car to
drive have to match these high standards and today, the
work carried out in the Ferrari garage was a testament
to the skill of our hard-working mechanics. During the
morning session, telemetry data from Massa’s engine
indicated that one parameter did not conform to the norm
and therefore, rather than take any risks, the decision
was taken to switch engines in the Brazilian’s car. Free
practice ended at noon and qualifying starts at 2pm: not
long to carry out the complex task of changing the power
unit, but it all went off smoothly. The other side of
the Ferrari garage was almost as busy, as a problem on
Alonso’s car also involved removing the back end of the
car from the chassis in order to put it right: both cars
were ready and running in time for the start of the
first part of qualifying.
The front row of the grid is an all-Red Bull affair, as
Sebastian Vettel continues his monopoly of pole position
this season, with Mark Webber alongside him. Nico
Rosberg gave Mercedes their best grid position of the
year with a third place and he is joined on the second
row by the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton. Fernando shares
row 3 with the other McLaren of Jenson Button. On row 5,
Felipe has Nick Heidfeld in the Renault on his inside.
Just in front of them, row 4 features Vitaly Petrov in
the second Renault and Michael Schumacher in the other
Mercedes.
More than the use of the moveable rear wing, more than
the power boost of KERS, the wear rate of the Pirelli
tyres will be the biggest unknown going into tomorrow’s
58 lap race and knowing exactly when to make the call
for the pit stops will hold the key to a good result.
Stefano Domenicali: “It seems that
Fernando has bought himself a subscription to fifth
place on the starting grid, given that once again this
season that’s where he starts from. The Spaniard drove a
very positive qualifying and put up a spirited fight
against very strong opponents. Felipe managed to get
through to the final part of the session, but he did not
look like setting a competitive time so he chose to pit
immediately so as to spare the tyres for the start.
Clearly this is not the sort of result we were looking
for, but it is equally evident that all the work
undertaken in these last few weeks is beginning to
deliver some signs of progress. It’s not yet enough, we
are well aware of that, but we are moving in the right
direction. Now we must concentrate on tomorrow’s race,
which will be very long and tough, both for the cars and
for the tyres. The number one priority, as always in
fact, will be reliability. As for the strategy, we have
seen in this early part of the season that there is a
great degree of unpredictability about it, so we will
have to keep our eyes wide open and a cool head, ready
to pounce on any and every opportunity.”
Fernando Alonso: “Fifth place is not
the sort of result one can be pleased about, but today I
am happy because I felt the car was more competitive
than it has been in the first three qualifying sessions
of the season. Getting into Q2 without using the soft
tyres is significant. We have made a small step forward
in terms of performance: it’s not yet enough and we
quickly need to make a bigger one, but it’s definitely a
confidence boost for the whole team, who are working in
the right direction. I would say that this the first
sign of light at the end of the tunnel in this early
part of the season. Fifth place also means I avoid the
dirty side of the track, which is usually a big handicap
here. It’s hard to say what will be the best strategy
for tomorrow, because we don’t know how the tyres will
behave: we will have to be ready for any eventuality and
be very flexible. Finally, I want to take the
opportunity to express my great sadness at the death of
a great personality in Spanish sport, Severiano
Ballesteros, who put Spain on the golfing map: I offer
all my sympathies to those close to him at this painful
time.”
Felipe Massa: “It was not a good
qualifying for me: I did not manage to get a clean lap
in Q3 after I made a significant mistake at Turn 9, when
I ended up going off line: we therefore decided it was
better to pit and save that set of tyres for the start.
In Q1, with the hards, I did not get a great lap and so
as not to take any risks, we decided to also use the
softs, so I only had one new set available for the final
part of qualifying. Now we will see what we can do in
the race tomorrow: usually our pace is better than in
qualifying, but it will not be easy to do well, given
that I’m starting from tenth. We will see what the tyre
degradation will be like, maybe it will be a bit higher
than what we saw in China. A shame, as I could have been
on the third row, along with my team-mate. This morning,
in FP3, the engineers saw an engine parameter that they
were not sure about and so it was decided to change it
at the end of the session. So I went back to the engine
I had already used in Malaysia and China, which
according to the schedule is still meant to do three
races.”
Pat Fry: “First and foremost,, I want
to congratulate the whole team who have worked so well
between the end of this morning’s free practice and the
start of qualifying: in less than two hours, they
changed the engine on one car and fixed a problem on the
other one which also involved splitting the rear end of
the car from the chassis. It’s hard to regard the
outcome of qualifying as positive however when we are
eight tenths off pole position, but at least we can say
we have made progress since the last race. We must push
to the maximum on the car development front, because we
are in a hurry to make up the performance deficit so
that we can fight for the top places in qualifying.
Tomorrow, we will see a lot of stops to change tyres
during the race: just how many will depend on what’s
referred to as the drop-off in tyre behaviour. The pit
stop boys will definitely have their work cut out!”
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