Red Bull surprised with gap to Hamilton
Both the Red Bull team and the drivers were surprised to see that Lewis Hamilton has quite a big advantage on anyone at Abu Dhabi. Despite that, they were also happy to qualify on 2nd and 3rd place on the grid on a circuit that shouldn't suit the car.
Sebastian Vettel:
“I think both Mark and I were surprised by the gap to Lewis. He’s been quick all weekend and the McLaren seems to be generally very strong here. We could see in Q1 and Q2 that it would be difficult to match their pace, so I think this was the maximum we could do today. I’m very pleased so far, it should be a good race. The car is working well here; it just seems that our KERS button, which we have on the steering wheel, isn’t working! But, let’s see. I think we have a good race pace and the car is getting better and better. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”
Mark Webber:
“A good day for the team - I’m happy to be starting near the front of the grid and we have a good chance tomorrow for a strong result. I’m surprised by Hamilton’s time, McLaren have done a very good job, no question about it, and it seems that this track suits them. We’re going to have our work cut out to beat Lewis tomorrow, but we’re going to give it our best shot. I think the KERS gives them a good advantage but, even without that, they clearly have a good car here. But, it’s a long race and anything can happen.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal:
“Firstly, what a fantastic venue. Abu Dhabi has done an amazing job and the track is a brilliant addition to the calendar. It was a good final qualifying session of 2009 – both cars comfortably made it through in to Q3 and both drivers delivered really good laps. Second and third is a very strong team result. Lewis is on pole by a reasonable margin, but we hope we can push him hard in the race tomorrow. It should be a really exciting finale to the season.”
Fabrice Lom, Renault, Principal Engineer Track Support: “A good team effort. Coming here, we didn’t think this track would suit us so well, so it’s a good result. Second and third is the best we could do today I think, especially when we see Hamilton’s race – he’s very, very quick, so congratulations to him for his pole position. We’ll try to make life hard for him tomorrow and score the maximum number of points to end the season on a high.”
