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Saturday’s qualifying session
saw Lotus Racing’s sunny faces beaming through
the rain as another important milestone was
achieved, with Heikki Kovalainen going into his
first Q2 with the team and finishing 15th
(1.52.270) after a clever strategy took
advantage of the heavy rain that started falling
just before the session began. Jarno Trulli
(18th, 1.52.884) narrowly missed out on Q2 but
was satisfied he did all he could in tricky
conditions.
Heikki Kovalainen (T127-01): “I’m so pleased! I
really like these conditions – it’s very hard to
judge your speed and you really have to take
some risks, and all the time you’re feeling like
you might lose the car, but that’s the challenge
and I love it! On some parts of the track it was
very wet and raining hard, and on others it
wasn’t so much. Getting to Q2 really exceeds
expectations for me and the whole team – yes of
course we’ve been a little bit lucky today for
sure, but it means we beat the other new teams,
again! Although we were lucky, we played our
strategy just right -if you look at the McLarens
and Ferraris they didn’t think it was going to
rain that much and look what happened. They
missed their window at the beginning of the
session and we took full advantage of it. Now I
can’t wait to race tomorrow!”
Jarno Trulli: “It was disappointing because I
was doing very well. Unfortunately on my
quickest lap a car spun in front of me, which
impeded me through the second and third sector
so I couldn’t close my fast lap; and then the
rain was getting worse, so there was no chance
to improve on lap time. Still – we’ll do our
best tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.”
Mike Gascoyne: “Obviously we’re all very very
pleased to get a car into Q2 and Heikki did a
tremendous job to get us there! I’m disappointed
for Jarno as he got traffic on the lap that
would have got him in. I think we got all the
calls on the tyres right on the pit wall and in
Q2 we ran the whole session on intermediates,
which was clearly the thing to do. We made a
change five minutes before the end, and Heikki
got in a good clear lap to get P15. Well done to
the whole team, and especially to Tony, for such
success at one of our two home races – I know
he’s very very proud.”
Team Principal Tony Fernandes was almost lost
for words: “I’m speechless! What a day! To get
15th place in our home country, in front of our
home crowd is amazing. I’m over the moon and
just so excited. We gave the Toro Rossos a run
for their money today and Jarno was just
unfortunate to get blocked, otherwise he’d have
been in Q2 as well. Tomorrow’s another day, and
we’ll see what happens, but it’s a good step
forward. Today we’ll enjoy it, and we’ll live
for the day, and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
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