Nick Heidfeld had little to say about his lacklustre display in qualifying.
The German was once again out-qualified by his on-song team mate and will start the Monaco Grand Prix from thirteenth place, his lowest grid position since Imola 2006.
“I don’t have much to say: my qualifying result is disappointing,” mulled the 31-year-old. “Here in Monaco I can’t heat up the tyres quickly enough”
The BMW driver has had a miserable weekend at the Principality. His F1.08 grinded to a halt at Casino square on Thursday and tyre problems in this mornings warm-up left him languishing down in eighteenth place.
Robert Kubica meanwhile put in an impressive charge to fifth place in qualifying, once again hustling the McLaren and Ferrari drivers.
“Again we showed we have a good pace,” reflected the 23-year-old. “I was pushing on every single lap of qualifying and this was all I could do today.”
“Unfortunately on my last flying lap I had Lewis Hamilton in front of me. He did not hold me up, but whenever you have another car in front of you there is some kind of a risk. On my out lap I tried to widen the gap to
Lewis so as to have no traffic. My tyres cooled down too much and I was very slow in the first sector of my quick lap.”
BMW’s senior management remained optimistic ahead of the Grand Prix despite the mixed bag of results.
“From a technical point of view our qualifying was ok,” reflected BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen.” “Certainly, we are disappointed with Nick ending up 13th. Robert showed a good pace and was able to fight for the top positions. In the end he even could have been a position further up the grid, but fifth is ok.”
Technical Director Willy Rampf acknowledged that a wet race might just be Nick Heidfeld’s savior.
“It will be a lot more difficult to score points in Monaco from 13th on the grid,” said the German. “However, for Sunday changing weather conditions are predicted, so we might see a surprise.”
