Lotus disappointed with Hungarian qualifying
Lotus Racing will start the Hungarian Grand Prix in 20th and 21st positions, with Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli qualifying within 1/10th of a second of each other at the Hungaroring in today’s official qualifying session.
Heikki Kovalainen (Chassis T127-01) FP3: 22 laps, best time 1.24.623, 21st / QUALIFYING: 20th, 1.24.120, 9 laps “I think we got as much out of the car as we could today. Considering the time I lost yesterday it felt like the maximum this afternoon. The car felt ok, and it’s a bit of a relief we got to where we are as I wasn’t sure about the balance today, bearing in mind I’d missed most of FP2. We’re still in a decent position for tomorrow and we’ll focus on the start and the strategy, and make sure we stay ahead of the other new teams in the race itself.”
Jarno Trulli (Chassis T127-04) FP3: 22 laps, best time 1.24.576, 20th / QUALIFYING: 21st, 1.24.199 9 laps “It’s a bit disappointing today. I was going well on the first run but I was held by the traffic in the last sector and lost about 4/10ths, so we had to abort that lap – it’s a shame as that was looking like pretty good. On the second run the tyres didn’t work as well as we’d hoped and that cost me a lot of time. Despite that we’ll do our best tomorrow, and want to see both cars across the finish line.”
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: “Little bit of a disappointing qualifying session today. After the first run both drivers were relatively happy, but neither of them got a clean run on the second set of tyres – Jarno in particular said he had very little grip with the second set. However, we are where we are, and we’re looking for a strong two car finish tomorrow.”
Kamarudin Meranun, Deputy Team Principal: “After the issues we had on Friday with Heikki we’ve got to be relatively pleased with where we are. Jarno’s lap was obviously affected by traffic, and I think Heikki got as much out of his runs as he could with the time he lost yesterday, so we’re still hopeful about getting ahead of the Virgin tomorrow, and getting both cars home.”
