Disappointing session for Renault
Today’s qualifying session in Suzuka saw Renault F1 Team drivers Fernando Alonso and Romain Grosjean qualify in 12th and 18th places respectively for tomorrow’s Japanese Grand Prix. The team is very disappointed with this result, but is at the moment still awaiting confirmation of the grid order for tomorrow.
Free practice 3
Fernando Alonso, R2904, 21 laps, P13, 1:32.742
Romain Grosjean, R2903, 25 laps, P11, 1:32.717
Qualifying
Fernando Alonso, R2904, P12, 1:31.638
Fernando: “It was a very strange qualifying session. The track conditions were good and all the drivers were pushing hard, but there were lots of incidents, amongst them Timo’s was the most serious and I am glad he is okay. It’s a shame to have missed Q3 as the yellow flag came out in the final stages of Q2. I was called by the stewards because I had a green second sector under yellow flags. I explained that coming out of turn 14 I had little visibility because of the dust left from Buemi spinning into the gravel …then I saw debris of a wing in the middle of the track, which I avoided and at that point I saw the yellow flag and immediately slowed down and came carefully into the pits. Tomorrow, for the race, I hope we can improve our position and score some points.” *
Romain Grosjean, R2903, P18, 1:32.073
Romain: “With the rain yesterday, we only had one hour of dry practice to get ready for today’s qualifying session. As a result, I haven’t been able to do much running on a track that I haven’t been to before, so that was a shame. We will see what strategy we can deploy tomorrow in order to give ourselves the best chance to have a good race.”
Bob Bell, Team Principal: “To be honest it was a disappointing session. Obviously Romain struggled to make it through Q1 and ultimately wasn’t comfortable enough with the car. We were pretty optimistic about getting Fernando into Q3, but unfortunately the situation with Buemi’s accident and the yellow flag meant that he had to back off during his second run and so he missed out on Q3.”
*At this stage the team awaits confirmation of the grid order for tomorrow.
