Japanese GP: Qualifying notes - Marussia

06/10/2012

Marussia F1 Team drivers Timo Glock and Charles Pic put a challenging FP3 to one side to hook it all up for an improved qualifying session this afternoon at Suzuka. The objective was to displace at least one of the Caterhams with at least one car and, as it turned out, both drivers were able to tick that box.

This morning Timo was hamstrung by an oil pressure problem and the restricted running this necessitated, while Charles continued to come to terms with the circuit.

This afternoon, Timo kept in touch with Heikki Kovalainen throughout Q1, trading sector times with his closest rival, but a couple of tenths ahead of his team-mate, and Vitaly Petrov behind him.

Timo Glock: "All well that ends well, but FP3 was a difficult start to the day, a bit like Singapore. Here, we had an oil pressure problem with the engine and I couldn't run very much, which was a bit of a shame as we needed to do some fine-tuning due to the track temperature change; our car was quite sensitive to it. So I was a little bit worried going into qualifying blind again and as we seemed to have dropped a bit in pace. We had a good think between me and my engineers on what to do and I think the changes all worked out well for us. I had only one flying lap on my second run and there was a little mistake in sector 1, but the car was good. To be ahead of one of the Caterhams despite the challenges we have had makes me quite happy and now we will see if we can find some more in the race."

Charles Pic: "I am reasonably happy with my qualifying lap, and to have achieved our objective of getting ahead of one of the Caterhams. Having said that I think there is more to come from the car still and extracting that will continue to be a big focus this afternoon and evening. At the moment it feels that we are a little less competitive than at Singapore, so we will use the time before the race to see what we can to do make some more progress tomorrow."

John Booth, Team Principal: "I think we can feel pleased with how today has panned out, after a challenging morning for Timo in particular, which has surely affected his ability to give 100% in qualifying. Having performed well in races of late, we still needed to carry that performance through in qualifying and today we have done just that, with both Timo and Charles finishing ahead of Vitaly Petrov. We're not quite as close to the car ahead as we would have liked, and Pedro delivered a good lap to just squeeze Charles out from behind Timo. Nonetheless, we are confident in our usual tendency to shine a little more in race trim and we are all looking forward to tomorrow and seeing how the various strategies play out."

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