Kobayashi 'very happy', Ericsson to start from pits
Kamui Kobayashi proved happy with his 18th place on the grid after today's qualifying session. Team mate Marcus Ericsson meanwhile qualified last, but will need to start from the pitlane due to a penalty for ignoring yellow flags.
Kamui Kobayashi, car #10, chassis CT05-#02, 18th: “I’m very happy with today’s qualifying result! I think the updates we introduced in Spa are working well and this is very positive news for the team. I didn’t have much time in the car yesterday, but I think it has been a very good comeback. We worked hard overnight to improve the car and we’ve ended up ahead of our competitors today. I’m very confident for tomorrow – it will be a very challenging race but we are looking strong.”
Marcus Ericsson, car #9, chassis CT05-#04, 21st: “This morning in FP3 we had a small problem with the engine before the performance run, so we didn’t get to do a proper run on the Option tyres and therefore we went into qualifying a bit blind, unfortunately. Everything worked fine in the afternoon, but we struggled to get the most out of the car. We need to look at the data tonight and see where we can improve compared to Kamui. I’m disappointed with the result but we will certainly fight back tomorrow!”
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: “Kamui put together a very good lap today to start ahead of the Marussias. We had a couple of small issues this morning so we had to change some settings to keep the reliability. It paid off and we were able to extract the maximum performance from the Power Units, which is positive on a power track such as Monza. Looking at the cars around us we could have a very interesting race tomorrow.”
