30/07/2011
NEWS STORY
Rubens Barrichello led the team in qualifying at the Hungaroring this afternoon, setting a time of 1:22.684 to put him 15th on the grid for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Whilst Rubens set his quickest time on Pirelli's prime tyre in Q2, Pastor Maldonado opted not to run in the second session. After making it through Q1 on the prime tyre, Pastor remained in the garage and so will start 17th on the grid with an extra set of supersofts for tomorrow's race.
Rubens Barrichello: Everything was running so well and we had a promising strategy in place, but I couldn't engage KERS in sector one of my last lap, and that compromised my time. I still had a pretty good lap, but I'm disappointed because we had a competitive run earlier on with the primes and so were thinking that 11th or 12th was possible on the option. Still, we've saved enough tyres and with a solid strategy we can have a better race tomorrow.
Pastor Maldonado: We decided not to run in Q2 to save a set of options. It is essential we get the best result we can from the race and so for our strategy it was important to save some tyres today. I think there will be a big fight tomorrow with the cars starting around us, but we have one more set of supersofts. I am looking forward to seeing what we can do now.
Sam Michael, Technical Director: Our plan today was to look at conserving tyres for the race so we only used the prime throughout Q1 on both cars. Rubens looked quite strong in the opening session so we actually ran one set of options on his car in Q2. Unfortunately a problem with KERS at the start of his quick lap compromised that decision and cost him some time so we really didn't get the most out of using the new option, as can be seen from the small, four tenths difference between his prime and option time. In Pastor's case, he chose not to run in Q2 to save the option tyre for tomorrow, which was the team's plan.
To check out our Hungary qualifying gallery, click here.