Mixed feelings for LRGP drivers
Day two at Interlagos resulted in mixed qualifying fortunes for LRGP. Bruno pleased his home fans despite suffering more reliability issues in the morning. He qualified in P9 whilst Vitaly could only manage P15 for the final race of the season.
• In FP3, using Pirelli’s soft tyre, Vitaly finished 11th with a time of 1min 13.838secs; Bruno came home 17th with a time of 1min 14.551secs.
• Vitaly looked impressive at the end of Q1, as he posted a time of 1min 13.859secs which placed him in P8. He was unable to maintain that form in Q2, and slipped down to P15 for tomorrow’s starting grid. Bruno, meanwhile, finished Q2 ninth fastest after a 1min 13.300secs lap on the soft tyre.
• In Q3, Bruno pulled out another quick lap in front of his home fans; a time of 1min 13.761secs solidified the Brazilian’s P9 on tomorrow’s grid.
• Bruno Q1: Medium, Soft; Q2: Soft, Soft; Q3: Soft
• Vitaly Q1: Medium, Soft; Q2: Soft, Soft
Bruno Senna, P9, R31-05, 1:13.761:
“I’m very happy with that. It was not what I was expecting when the weekend started but it’s good news. We knew the car had good potential here, but we just weren’t sure the level of that potential – the R31 behaved very well today! In qualifying 2, the team put a good car together and we did a great job. It’s a shame we had used tyres going into Q3 because we could have had an even better result. Having said that, being in Q3 was a victory in itself.”
Vitaly Petrov, P15, R31-06, 1:14.053:
“I’m naturally disappointed with my position because we have been improving the car step by step throughout the weekend and we thought there was more to come from it. We changed the car set-up quite a lot to accommodate for the change in temperature between FP3 and qualifying. As for qualifying itself, I didn’t actually feel I made many mistakes; I had quite a quick lap at the end of Q1 but then I lost some grip on my lap in Q2, which left me where it did.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director
Contrasting fortunes for the drivers today, but are you generally happy? Yes, of course. We are pleased for Bruno as that was a strong qualifying performance for him during his home race weekend. He put in a couple of good laps when it mattered and he’s deserving of that position. It was unfortunate for Vitaly; he didn’t get his lap together when it counted, but generally we are happy with the performance of the team and are now looking forward to tomorrow’s race.
Various set-up changes to the cars this morning– can you comment on these? We altered a few things on Bruno’s car, including some camber and front wing changes. The car obviously felt better for him in qualifying than it did in this morning’s session.
Looking ahead to tomorrow’s race, what options do we have? The forecast for tomorrow suggests there are likely to be some thundery showers so that will give us all something to think about and could make it an interesting race to finish off the season.
