Renault satisfied with Italian qualifying
Today's qualifying session at the high-speed Monza circuit saw Renault F1 Team drivers Fernando Alonso and Romain Grosjean qualify in 8th and 12th places respectively for tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix.
Free Practice
Fernando Alonso, R2904, 17 laps, P8, 1:23.915 on lap 14
1 installation lap
Run 1: 6 laps, new soft tyres
Run 2: 5 laps, same soft tyres, change to front anti-roll bar
Run 3: 5 laps, new hard tyres
Romain Grosjean, R2903, 15 laps, P11, 1:24.197 on lap 13
1 installation lap
Run 1: 5 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 5 laps, new hard tyres
Run 3: 4 laps, new soft tyres
Qualifying
Fernando Alonso, R2904, P8, 1:25.072
Q1: 1 run on new hard tyres, 1 run on new soft tyres
Q2: 1 run on new soft tyres, 1 run on new hard tyres
Q3: 1 run on scrubbed soft tyres, 1 run on new hard tyres
Fernando: "We had a few doubts about reaching Q3 this morning so we are happy to have made it through. In the end we missed being in fourth or fifth position by a very small amount. I hope to have a good start of the race tomorrow and gain some places using the KERS."
Romain Grosjean, R2903, P12, 1:23.728
Q1: 1 run on new hard tyres, 2 runs on new soft tyres
Q2: 2 runs on soft tyres
Romain: "This is my best performance in qualifying so far. Of course, I would have preferred to make it through to Q3, but I think I can be happy with my performance today. For tomorrow, the KERS should help us at the start of the race. My aim will be to finish in the top ten and if I can score some points I will be very happy."
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: "Today we had a very exciting qualifying session with Fernando in eighth place and just missing fifth by six hundredths of a second. We can see already that there is going to be a number of one-stop strategies in this race so a lot will come down to management of the car and the tyres. Romain was very unlucky not to get through to Q3. His last lap was looking very promising but a small mistake kept him out by a couple of tenths. We are now looking forward to a good race tomorrow."
