Ex-Champ Car driver Bourdais smokes Vettel again
The Frenchman made it relatively easily into the second round of qualifying after setting the 13th fastest time but his final qualifying lap saw him lock his rear brakes and he had to be content with 16th on the grid.
Sebastian Vettel had a tougher time of it and was unable to progress into the second phase of qualifying and starts 18th.
Sebastien Bourdais
“Yesterday I said that if everything went our way it would be possible to get into Q2. Obviously, I was quite happy to be thirteenth in Q1 because it really wasn’t the greatest lap, as I had quite a lot of traffic in front of me. Unfortunately, the track conditions kept improving and we were running out of adjustments to dial out the understeer in Q2. It was a bit frustrating, because it felt as though the car had some more in it. Then, on my last run I aborted the lap because I had a moment, which was down to the fact we tried something different to try and get rid of the understeer, but it did not give us grip and it upset the balance."
Sebastian Vettel
“I was always struggling a bit in the first sector of the lap. Towards the end of Q1, I was reasonably well placed, but I did not feel confident with the car as I had no feeling for it in that first sector. It seemed as though the car wasn’t ready and it was sliding around a lot. As we know, it’s tight in the midfield and I missed out by not very much, because the rest of my lap was okay. Sebastien made it comfortably into Q2 so there is something we need to work on. The race will hopefully be a different story, after just not having the pace in qualifying."
Giorgio Ascanelli
“It was worth coming to Spain just to see Alonso’s qualifying lap! As for us, the cars have run reliably so far and in performance terms we did what we could with what we had."