Belgian GP Qualifying

Posted on Saturday 29 Aug 2009 and tagged with Belgium, Qualifying.

Today’s qualifying session at the Spa circuit ahead of tomorrow’s Belgian Grand Prix threw up an uncharacteristic front row, and, by extension, saw a number of favoured drivers knocked out in the earlier stages of the sessions. After an uncompetitive start to the weekend with the AT&T Williams team struggling to find pace, late overnight changes and a commanding session-best sector two in Q2 enabled Nico Rosberg to maintain a near-perfect top 10 qualifying record this season. In the fluctuating form up and down the field, Kazuki Nakajima was unable to repeat the performance of his team-mate and starts tomorrow’s race on the ninth row of the grid.

Nico Rosberg:
We have really struggled all weekend but we managed to get the best out of Q2 and finishing 10th was possibly the best we could achieve carrying quite a lot of fuel. We have a good strategy and therefore I think we can fight for some points tomorrow. It was a very strange qualifying session here today, I think maybe the way the teams are using their tyres is making quite a difference.

Kazuki Nakajima:
We struggled here yesterday in practice, but Nico managed to either drive very well or find a set-up direction that I didn’t. I hope I can learn something from the progress he made today and have a better time tomorrow in the race to make up for today’s disappointment.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
We had a difficult day yesterday and we changed a lot of things overnight which definitely made the car better. It was an unbelievably tight qualifying session considering how long the lap is, which goes to show how much of a difference the rules have made. Nico did a fantastic job to get the car through to Q3 and from that point we adjusted our strategy to concentrate on Sunday. Congratulations to Force India for their first pole.

Qualifying Result

Position	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	G Fisichella	Force India	-	-	1:46.308
2	J Trulli	Toyota	-	-	1:46.395
3	N Heidfeld	BMW Sauber	-	-	1:46.500
10	N Rosberg	AT&T Williams	1:45.486 (8th)	1:45.047 (10th)	1:47.362
18	K Nakajima	AT&T Williams	1:46.037	-	-