Qualifying - European GP

We will start tomorrow’s European Grand Prix from 13th with Adrian Sutil and 14th with Tonio Liuzzi after a frustrating qualifying session. Both VJM03s had been performing well throughout the weekend, with both Adrian and Tonio finishing the earlier practice session inside the top eight. The pair started qualifying well, making one run on the prime tyres, with Tonio posting the 11th quickest time and Adrian the 15th to pass easily into Q2.

Adrian Sutil - car 14, VJM03/03
FP3:    4th    1:38.500        (17 laps)
Q1:    15th    1:39.021        (6 laps)
Q2:    13th    1:38.851        (8 laps)

Tonio Liuzzi - car 15, VJM03/01
FP3:    7th     1:38.676        (17 laps)
Q1:    11th    1:38.969        (7 laps)
Q2:    14th    1:38.884        (8 laps)

A switch to the option tyres did not however produce the anticipated improvement in pace and despite putting together clean laps, frustratingly neither Adrian nor Tonio could progress through into Q3.

Adrian Sutil - car 14
This morning the car felt really good and I could push on both the prime and the option tyres, and it showed in the time I was able to do. But in Q2 I had a clean lap but the grip just didn’t seem to be there. Over the whole session it was so hard and we couldn’t get the tyres to work – such a big difference from the morning session. It’s obviously very disappointing as we looked very strong here and we didn’t change much from this morning. I’m now concentrating on the race – we had a good event here last year and, as we saw in Montreal, our race pace is very strong so there’s always opportunities to make up positions.

Tonio Liuzzi - car 15
This morning we were really quick and it didn’t start too badly in Q1 for us so we were very positive about getting a good result. But it got very hot this afternoon, perhaps seven or eight degrees hotter than in free practice this morning, and it seemed to have a big effect on the tyres. Both Adrian and myself had big issues with the soft tyres in Q2 and had a lot of understeer. It’s a real shame as both yesterday and this morning we were looking very competitive and we had hoped for more. But we’re not giving up as there are so many possibilities in the race – just look at Montreal where we had the accident at the start, but fought to the end and still picked up two points.

Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal
It’s been a disappointing day as we showed a genuine pace this morning and couldn’t quite deliver this afternoon. It’s something to work on tonight and come back strong in the race tomorrow. We’ve shown good pace here before and in fact last year we started 12th and 16th and finished 10th and 12th in the race so there’s still everything to work towards.