Another pole for Vettel as KERS issues continue
Sebastian Vettel added another pole position to his and Red Bull's tally. He had two competitive runs needed to take pole as both Ferraris were menacing. Mark Webber put in his best effort but ended up fourth as his KERS was not working again.
Sebastian Vettel, car 1, position: 1st (3rd Practice – P1, 1:13.381):
“I’m happy with that. We’ve made up some ground from last year when we committed to a different strategy and sacrificed qualifying, but this year I feel comfortable. I had a rough start yesterday morning, but thankfully the guys could fix the car and I had more practice in the afternoon, which is important here. It’s a tricky track to understand, with the kerbs and the chicanes, coming from high speeds with hard braking, but we had a smooth qualifying session today and two very good runs. All in all, I’m very happy. It’s obviously a big step we’ve made today, but the big task comes tomorrow. The conditions are likely to change and I’m sure we’ll see some rain – the question is when and how much. We’ll see, but P1 is the best position to start from.”
Mark Webber, car 2, position: 4th (3rd Practice – no time set):
“It was a good afternoon and I was happy with how we recovered. I couldn’t have got much more out of the car for qualifying today; I didn’t have KERS, which affected my performance. The guys did everything they could to get it ready after the problem we had this morning and we were confident that it was fixed, but on the formation lap it lapsed again. We tried to recover it for Q3, but it wasn’t possible. A front row would have been nice to have here, but fourth is towards the front and the second row is good considering our day. It’s a long Grand Prix tomorrow and there’s likely to be a bit of weather coming in, so it should be an interesting race.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal:
“It’s fantastic to get our first pole position in Montreal. It was a great performance by Sebastian again today, completing two laps in Q3 that were good enough for pole. The Ferrari’s have been very quick here and we expect them and McLaren to be a big challenge tomorrow. Mark made a good recovery without the benefit of KERS, which we know is worth a couple of tenths here. It was a great performance from him and he will start from the second row at a track where you can overtake.”
Cyril Dumont, Renault:
“So, Sebastian is on pole again; congratulations to him. It’s a bit of a shame for Mark, he wasn’t able to run this morning and then going into qualifying he had an issue with KERS. It’s a shame as I think he would have been on the front row. Regarding the package, this circuit is not supposed to suit our car and engine, but we showed that’s not the case. Hopefully we will have a dry race tomorrow without any weather changes, but we will see how it goes.”
