Saturday: A mixed start for Ricciardo at HRT
The two HRTs, although remaining at the bottom of the starting grid, managed to qualify within 107% of the pole. Ricciardo, making his debut as a full-time F1 driver, lags slightly behind his teammate Liuzzi.
Vitantonio Liuzzi – 23rd:
« It was a difficult qualifying session because of the weather, but also because we’ve been having problems with the car since yesterday; the balance hasn’t been good from the start and the weather didn’t help us understand the new developments we’ve brought to the car. It hasn’t been easy, we didn’t have the best balance for the qualifiers but, overall, it was our best lap of the week because it was a bit better. The race will be quite difficult because our rivals seem to be very fast compared to last year. We knew this circuit wouldn’t be great for our car, but we must keep pushing and see how things develop tomorrow. »
Daniel Ricciardo – 24th:
« My first qualifying session was okay, but it was a bit frustrating with the weather; we couldn’t do two runs, but it was fine. I would have liked to be a bit closer to the others, but I can’t hope for too much at the moment; it’s a big learning curve. I’m half a second behind Tonio, which isn’t huge, but for a racing driver, it’s quite a significant gap. I want more, but I couldn’t really have expected more from this session; if I manage to close the gap, then that’s okay. »
« I met the team on Wednesday, and it was a great warm-up; everyone is really very nice. With the engineers, it’s tough to enter F1 and start a new relationship from mid-season, but I believe we are doing good things and I’m sure it will be easier starting from here. »
Colin Kolles – Team Principal:
« It was a difficult day due to the rain that fell in FP3 and it wasn’t easy to get the ideal setup for qualifying. Obviously, it also started to rain during qualifying and, unfortunately, we had bad timing and were unable to do a second run. So that’s why the result is quite disappointing. »
« Tomorrow, we need to finish the race and we’ll see what the end has in store for us. Today, I expected more; we knew it would be tough due to our traction issues and lack of aero loads. We had some new updates on the car but, unfortunately, it was difficult to find the right pace and respond in the right way under these circumstances. »
