We'll pounce on the slightest mistake - Kovalainen
The ING Renault F1 Team’s Finnish driver, Heikki Kovalainen, is happy with his qualifying session. The Finnish rookie qualified 7th on the European Grand Prix grid, while team mate Fisichella only made it to 13th.
"It isn’t a big gain in terms of pure performance but it enables us to do some things differently. Up to now we’ve had a problem in qualifying. To get front-end grip and to get the tyres up to temperature properly we’ve had to modify the set-up parameters quite a lot. And this compromise had a downside; the car wore its rear tyres a lot in the race. With our new front wing we’ve got the pace in qualifying without compromising our race performance. Our simulations show it is a definite step forward."
The Renaults have been well down the time sheets in free practice this weekend. Has the car proved more difficult to set up on this circuit?"I don’t really think so. You know, it seems that Renault doesn’t have the same approach as the others when it comes to race preparation. Our fuel levels and our tyre choices are often quite different in free practice. Since yesterday I knew that I could make it into the top ten in qualifying so I wasn’t very worried."
Where are you in your battle with the BMWs?"I think they’ve still got a slight edge on us this weekend. Their pace looks very good on this circuit. But we’ll pounce on the slightest mistake. We’re still very close to them in terms of performance, maybe just a tad behind."
Finally, Mark Webber is just 0.002s in front of you: a bit frustrating?"No, not really. I gave my all in qualifying and in fact I was quicker in Q3 than in Q2. Of course, I might perhaps have been able to find those two/tenths here or there, but if you ask Webber he’ll tell you that he could have gone a bit quicker too. What’s more important is that I’m starting from the clean side of the track, so I’ve got a good chance of overtaking the Red Bull right at the start."
Source Renault
