Pedro de la Rosa, 21st: “I’m very happy, for myself and the entire team. In Monaco we completed a good qualifying and here it was even better. The objective was to achieve our fastest lap and we did it. A 17.4 is good, but we could have done better on the last set of tyres but I wasn’t able to improve on my previous lap. We’ve been quick the whole weekend, it wasn’t a coincidence and we should do well tomorrow. With the soft tyres we’re very consistent and, what’s most important is that we’re very quick on straights so we have a chance to overtake others and it will be difficult to overtake us. Ahead of tomorrow’s race I think we can fight with anyone because our car has good speed and is stable when braking, so we aim to make the most out of this.”
Narain Karthikeyan, 24th: “It was a messy qualifying for me. On the first set of tyres I encountered a lot of traffic and on my quickest lap I got all the sectors right and I made a mistake coming into the last corner which cost me six tenths. My qualifying has been weak this year and I need to improve this. But we have a good pace and tomorrow we will fight with our main rivals to try and get a good result”.
Toni Cuquerella, Technical Director: “Today we confirmed the progression which we proved yesterday and that we already demonstrated in Monte Carlo, and I want to thank the whole team for their work. Pedro completed a very good lap and Narain could’ve been there easily. Both we’re comfortably under the 104% and have a good pace with both tyres and we have a good set-up for the race so, although the race will be tough on the brakes, we’re optimistic about our chances. Depending on the temperature we will go for a one-stop or two-stop strategy”.
