Fernando Alonso brought some joy to his troubled Renault team with the eighth fastest time in qualifying for tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix.
Although the Spaniard was happy to reach the final segment of qualifying, he was disappointed at not achieving a higher grid slot. As a result, Alonso is now hoping to use KERS at the start of the Grand Prix to make up some places.
Romain Grosjean enjoyed his best qualifying session of the season, setting the twelfth fastest time.
Fernando Alonso – 8th: “We had a few doubts about reaching Q3 this morning so we are happy to have made it through. In the end we missed being in fourth or fifth position by a very small amount. I hope to have a good start of the race tomorrow and gain some places using the KERS.”
Romain Grosjean – 12th: “This is my best performance in qualifying so far. Of course, I would have preferred to make it through to Q3, but I think I can be happy with my performance today. For tomorrow, the KERS should help us at the start of the race. My aim will be to finish in the top ten and if I can score some points I will be very happy.”
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: “Today we had a very exciting qualifying session with Fernando in eighth place and just missing fifth by six hundredths of a second. We can see already that there is going to be a number of one-stop strategies in this race so a lot will come down to management of the car and the tyres. Romain was very unlucky not to get through to Q3. His last lap was looking very promising but a small mistake kept him out by a couple of tenths. We are now looking forward to a good race tomorrow.”
