Second pole position of the season for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, the first courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen. For the Finn, this was his fifteenth career pole, the second at this track, whilethe Scuderia’s total now moves up to 197, 13 of which were obtained at this Grand Prix. “Obviously we are pleased with the result of today’s qualifying, commented Stefano Domenicali. “We were expecting a very close fight and that’s what we got, to the extentthat the top five are all within less than three tenths of a second of one another. This alsoshows we are up against some very strong opponents and we will have to do everythingperfectly if we want to get a good result. All the signs point to this but that’s never enough: you also need reliability, a team and the drivers concentrating fully and a good strategy. ”
Kimi Raikkonen: “I’ve been chasing pole for a while now, but for one reason or another, it always escaped me. But today I got it. There is no better place to start so I will try andmake the most of that tomorrow. It will be important to get off the line well, getting throughthe first corner without any problems. Then it will be down to exploiting the car’s potentialand that is definitely good. The race is what matters and tomorrow I want to bring home anice result. So maybe it was not too bad doing so few laps in the dry in last week’s test, aswe were able to work on set-up with a different approach. On my first run in Q3, I lost a bitof grip in the final sector, but then on the second set of tyres everything went well. Theperfect lap? You can always do better. ”
Felipe Massa: “I got a good lap with my first set of tyres in Q3, but that was not the caseon my second, especially in the final sector of the track and that meant I could not improveon my time. When qualifying is as close as this it only takes the smallest of things to loseor gain a few places. I think we will be very competitive tomorrow, but we can expect atough race. Anything can happen and we will have to give it our best shot to bring homethe best result possible. We can count on a car that is good over a long run, which hasbeen the case from last week’s test up to and including yesterday. ”
Luca Baldisserri: “This was an incredibly close fight. Once again it demonstrated thatyou have to pay close attention to the smallest detail if you aspire to the top places, especially in qualifying. From what we have seen, for the race, we can run at a good paceover a distance and we will try and make the most of our grid positions. The crucialelements will be the same as ever: the start, the strategy, reliability and tyre performance. Our mood of cautious optimism from yesterday remains the same today. ”
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