Disappointing qualifying for Red Bull
Red Bull racing had an extremely disappointing qualifying session as they managed only 7th and 11th on tomorrow's grid. For both drivers the car was simply not fast enough, but then again they are both confident it will be a lot better in race conditions.
Mark Webber, car 2, Position: 7th, (3rd Practice – P5, 1:36.635):
"The Q2 lap wasn’t bad, but I didn’t get the Q3 lap together as I would have liked. It’s a bit all over the place with pulling a lap time together on the soft tyre, but I would have liked to have finished a row further up. The 1m35.7 in Q2 was a good lap, but I maybe tried to eek a bit too much out in Q3. It’s frustrating. We know we have a good race car, so it will be interesting to see how it unfolds tomorrow. It’s very close and we’ll keep pushing."
Sebastian Vettel, car 1, Position: 11th, (3rd Practice – P9, 1:37.039):
"There was no problem with the car, but I couldn’t get the final few tenths. I was happy with the laps I did in Q2, but they weren’t quick enough and we couldn’t make it in to Q3. We have a long race ahead of us tomorrow and the car did feel good, so in terms of race pace we should do better tomorrow. We weren’t fast enough and we have to accept it. We start from P11 tomorrow and see what we can do from there."
Christian Horner, Team Principal:
“An ultimately disappointing qualifying. Having looked quick and competitive on the hard tyre, it was a shame for Sebastian to miss Q3 by a very small margin. Mark topped the times in Q2, but then unfortunately he couldn’t repeat that lap in Q3, so we are P6 and P11 on the grid tomorrow, after Lewis’ penalty. It wasn’t our expectation, but the top ten has quite a different shape to it here, so it should make an interesting race.”
Cyril Dumont, Renault F1 support team leader:
“Of course disappointing today, we saw that in Q2 it was pretty tight, we had eleven cars separated by three tenths. Unfortunately we were eleventh with Sebastian, who missed out on Q3 by only about 500ths I guess , so it’s disappointing. I also think it’s a disappointing for Mark, as he couldn’t repeat his Q2 lap in Q3. So, Mark will start in P6 with Hamilton’s penalty. We have the two Mercedes in front of us, which don’t always have the best race pace, so we can still have a good race tomorrow, as we normally have good race pace.”
