Formula One
MCLAREN TAKE THEIR 63RD FRONT ROW START AT MONZA.
Lewis Hamilton: I think practice was a lot better for me, I did much better laps in practice”Generally I didn’t think that lap was anywhere near good enough and I was up a couple of tenths on my second lap, but I was in a train of cars so was not able to better my lap.Nonetheless I am happy, and happy for team – they are doing a fantastic job. They had great success in the last race with Jenson and to have us both up here is what they deserve. I haven’t had any distractions this weekend so it’s been positive. The support from family and friends has been incredible so I’m enjoying the weekend, and it’s been pretty smooth weekend.”
Jenson Button: Drafting is something that personally I feel it is difficult to plan. It is difficult to get it right. You concentrate too much on it and getting the braking point right. The way we did it was much better, just finding traffic on the circuit. In Q3 I realised how much difference a tow makes, I was able to get a reasonable tow off Vettel, which surprisingly made a big difference.” For us both to be on the front row is fantastic for the team. The last three races we have shown strength, and qualifying both cars on front row is great, so thank you very much. It doesn’t matter who is alongside you, the first corner is always an interesting corner, especially because it is such a long run down there. You cannot plan it.
Fernando Alonso: It’s a shame because I think it would have been the easiest pole position of the year for us. vWe did 1m24.1s in Q1 with an easy lap and then looking at it, 1m24.0s was, let’s say, easy for us to do. We lost one big opportunity but nothing we can do now. We’ll try to be strong tomorrow, the car will be fixed and we will see what we can do from 10th. Something broke in the car in Q3, so we had no time to fix it, so we went out just to see if we could beat some of the cars but unfortunately we were not able because we lost too much performance.
Stefano Domenicali : Yes! it was an issue with the rollbar. It seems to be a proble with the rear bar, It seems to be a mechanical failure. We need to wait for the car to come back. We knew that the car was not good because Fernando understood exactly the situation straight away, so that’s very unfortunate but that’s the way it is. Of course we are very disappointed because we could have done a great qualifying with Fernando and at least we are pleased that Felipe did a good job. He is there just behind the McLarens.
Pos Driver Car Time Gap 1. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1m24.010s 2. Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 1m24.133s + 0.123s 3. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m24.247s + 0.237s 4. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 1m24.304s + 0.294s*** 5. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m24.540s + 0.530s 6. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault 1m24.802s + 0.792s 7. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m24.833s + 0.823s 8. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault 1m24.855s + 0.845s 9. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 1m25.109s + 1.099s 10. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m25.678s + 1.668s Q2 cut-off time: 1m24.742s Gap * 11. Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1m24.809s + 0.567s 12. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault 1m24.820s + 0.578s**** 13. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1m24.901s + 0.659s 14. Bruno Senna Williams-Renault 1m25.042s + 0.800s 15. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m25.312s + 1.070s 16. Jerome d'Ambrosio Lotus-Renault 1m25.408s + 1.166s 17. Jean-Eric Vergne Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1m25.441s + 1.199s Q1 cut-off time: 1m25.834s Gap ** 18. Heikki Kovalainen Caterham-Renault 1m26.382s + 2.207s 19. Vitaly Petrov Caterham-Renault 1m26.887s + 2.712s 20. Timo Glock Marussia-Cosworth 1m27.039s + 2.864s 21. Charles Pic Marussia-Cosworth 1m27.073s + 2.898s 22. Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 1m27.441s + 3.266s 23. Pedro de la Rosa HRT-Cosworth 1m27.629s + 3.454s 24. Nico Hulkenberg Force India-Mercedes