Red Bull were another team to lose out in the final section of qualifying for tomorrow’s Monaco Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel was fourth fastest, but felt his final qualifying attempt was compromised by traffic, notably Nakajima’s Williams.
Mark Webber also made a strategy blunder by only opting to do one qualifying run. The Australian will line up eighth.
Sebastian Vettel – 4th: “As I came out of Rascasse, Nakajima was almost stopped on the circuit and, you know, if you want to get everything right here in qualifying you have to have a clear lap. That wasn’t the case on the last half of my lap when I was stuck in traffic when that happens you lose downforce and start to slide, so it’s anything but qualifying! It was a shame today as the car was good and we could have done better but there are 78 laps to go, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
Mark Webber 8th: “That wasn’t too bad, we knew it was going to be very tight, but we have a reasonable strategy for tomorrow. There are some different ideas going round about what tyres everyone will start the race on, as the hard and soft tyres have different characteristics in race conditions. I’m reasonably happy with what I did today, maybe we could have done a different strategy in Q3 it was my idea to do one run, but maybe we should have done two.”
Christian Horner Team principal: “A frustrating final Q3, when unfortunately
Nakajima cost Sebastian some time he seemed extraordinarily slow despite Sebastian giving him plenty of room before starting his final lap. Mark managed to save a set of tyres with a very good time in Q2, but in Q3 he was unfortunately at the wrong end of a tenth of a second, but we believe we have a good strategy for tomorrow.”
