CANADA GP – QUALIFYING RESULTS

Report – Not the best of qualifying sessions for Scuderia Ferrari in Canada. Fernando Alonso will start tomorrow’s race from seventh on the grid, while Kimi Raikkonen is in tenth place. Having made it to Q2 without any bother, the two F14 Ts then had a harder time. Fernando excelled himself, with a great 1.16.131 which put him through to Q3, using two sets of new tyres. Kimi had to make an additional run, which meant that when he got to the final part, he only had one set of new tyres left. On his second flying lap in Q3, Alonso did a 1.15.814, while Kimi’s single run netted him a 1.16.214.

Final Times:

Pos Driver                Team                 Time           Gap   
 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes             1m14.874s         
 2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes             1m14.953s  +0.079s 
 3. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault     1m15.548s  +0.674s 
 4. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Mercedes    1m15.550s  +0.676s 
 5. Felipe Massa          Williams-Mercedes    1m15.578s  +0.704s 
 6. Daniel Ricciardo      Red Bull-Renault     1m15.589s  +0.715s 
 7. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari              1m15.814s  +0.940s 
 8. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Renault   1m16.162s  +1.288s 
 9. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes     1m16.182s  +1.308s 
10. Kimi Raikkonen        Ferrari              1m16.214s  +1.340s 
Q2 cut-off time: 1m16.255s                                   Gap **
11. Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes 1m16.300s  +1.246s
12. Kevin Magnussen       McLaren-Mercedes     1m16.310s  +1.256s
13. Sergio Perez          Force India-Mercedes 1m16.472s  +1.418s
14. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault        1m16.687s  +1.633s
15. Daniil Kvyat          Toro Rosso-Renault   1m16.713s  +1.659s
16. Adrian Sutil          Sauber-Ferrari       1m17.314s  +2.260s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m18.235s                                Gap *
17. Pastor Maldonado      Lotus-Renault        1m18.328s  +2.578s
18. Max Chilton           Marussia-Ferrari     1m18.348s  +2.598s
19. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Ferrari     1m18.359s  +2.609s
20. Kamui Kobayashi       Caterham-Renault     1m19.278s  +3.528s
21. Marcus Ericsson       Caterham-Renault     1m19.820s  +4.070s
22. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari       no time

QUOTES

Kimi Raikkonen: “All weekend, I haven’t been completely satisfied with the handling of my car and again today in qualifying I found it difficult. On my only run in Q3, I went out on a new set of Supersofts, but my F14 T was sliding a lot and I couldn’t put together a good lap. Maybe I could have been one or two places higher up, but I don’t think it would have changed much. Even if the updates we tried yesterday worked, we knew it wouldn’t be easy: probably this is one of the tracks that least suits the characteristics of our car. I expect a very long race tomorrow, in which anything could happen. We will try and get a good start and then give it our all.”

Pat Fry: “Today we knew we’d be facing a difficult qualifying, but to be honest, we were hoping for something a bit better. We also knew that at this track, we wouldn’t just be fighting Red Bull, but other teams as well who, thanks to the few corners and long straights here, would give us a hard time and that proved to be the case. The session began in particularly high temperatures, almost 20 degrees hotter than yesterday and we struggled more than our rivals to find enough grip with both cars. From a technical point of view Red Bull, thanks to their higher level of downforce and Williams, with the better driveability of the Mercedes engine, were able to get more out of the tyres, which meant they were more competitive than us. Tomorrow, we will try and do all we can to get a good start, although this year it has not been so easy to make the most of the straights for overtaking. We will definitely have to keep an eye on tyre degradation, which has a bigger effect here, especially with the rears.”

Raikkonen bemoans edgy Ferrari: “It wasn’t a very good lap in the end, but obviously I only had one chance,” he said. “We could have improved the speed a bit if I could have another go, but then that doesn’t change an awful lot our position.

“It’s difficult to know, it’s sliding around and it’s very difficult to make one good lap. If you hit a little bit of kerb in a different way then it changes. It’s right on the edge and sliding around.”

Raikkonen said the traffic was a distraction, but that he would only have gained one or two positions on the grid with a completely clean lap.

“It didn’t help. You know they are going to move out of the way, but they are still there so it doesn’t help. I locked a wheel on one corner, but that’s how it goes. If we had a second run maybe we could go faster but it would just be by one or two places, it’s not like it would have changed the whole picture. It’s more or less where I have been the whole weekend.”