Bridgestone Motorsport: British Grand Prix- Day 2 Report
Jul 05, 2008
McLaren
Heikki Kovalainen (Vodafone McLaren Mercedes) has achieved his first ever F1 pole position byusing Bridgestone’s medium compound Potenza to go fastest in qualifying at Silverstone for theBritish Grand Prix, round nine of the FIA Formula One World Championship.
Kovalainen was quickest by over half a second with a lap of 1min 21.049 secs. Second fastest wasRed Bull Racing driver Mark Webber, who also used the medium compound to set his fastest time,and will start from the front row of the grid for the first time since Monaco in 2006. Kimi Raikkonen(Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro) set the third fastest time whilst last year’s pole sitter Lewis Hamilton(Vodafone McLaren Mercedes) was fourth. BMW Sauber F1 Team’s Nick Heidfeld was fifth fastest,whilst Fernando Alonso (ING Renault F1 Team) was sixth, with his team-mate Nelson Piquetqualifying one place behind in seventh. Sebastian Vettel (Scuderia Toro Rosso) qualified in eighthposition, ahead of Felipe Massa (Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro) in ninth. Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber F1Team) was the final driver to qualify in the top ten.
In the morning practice session Alonso went fastest, with a time of 1min 20.740 secs, set on themedium compound. Alonso was over two tenths faster than the second fastest driver, Webber. Thissession started with a wet track, which dried during running. The extreme wet and wet tyres wereused during the session, as well as both compounds of dry tyres. Today’s fastest lap time, a 1min19.537 secs, was set by Lewis Hamilton, using the medium compound in Q2. The morning rain atSilverstone meant that much of the rubber laid down on Friday was washed away, hence lap timeswere not significantly faster than yesterday.
Hirohide Hamashima - Director of Bridgestone Motorsport Tyre Development, said:
“Congratulations to Heikki Kovalainen for achieving his first pole position, which he did by over half asecond. This was a very impressive performance on a difficult day for drivers. We saw verychangeable conditions, but both the hard and medium compound dry tyres worked well. With themedium compound we saw more graining on the front tyre, and some teams struggled withundersteer because of this. In the morning practice we saw that our wet tyre is well suited toSilverstone and performance was strong. Tomorrow will be very interesting as we will be at the mercyof the weather. If there is rain before the race but a dry track, some teams will experience severewear because of the green track, and we could see many different strategies.”
