Japanese GP Qualifying

Posted on Saturday 11 Oct 2008 and tagged with japan.

The grey skies and rain showers of this morning cleared to deliver dry conditions for qualifying for tomorrow’s second Japanese Grand Prix to be held at the 4.5km Fuji Speedway. Unfortunately, neither AT&T Williams driver was able to translate some promising form shown in practice into a place in the top ten, however. For his first home Grand Prix, Kazuki Nakajima will start from P14, one step ahead of team mate Nico Rosberg who will line up in 15th.

Kazuki Nakajima:
After a strong run in the practice sessions that was a difficult qualifying, but we did do our best. I don’t think that this afternoon’s conditions suited the car that much and some traffic interrupted my last run, which didn’t help me either. We now need to prepare a good strategy for tomorrow’s race.

Nico Rosberg:
It wasn’t very nice to qualify 15th today, especially having come from Singapore where I finished on the podium, but that’s the reality. We’ve struggled a bit this weekend, but we were expecting to be less competitive here as we just seem to be missing something on these types of circuits. I’m keeping my expectations for the race in check, particularly if it stays dry, but we could have a better chance of doing well if it rains. I’m happy with my qualifying lap though, and Kazuki’s been doing a really good job all weekend. He’s been a little bit quicker than me and I’m pleased for him as he’s in front of his home crowd. But this weekend isn’t over yet; we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Sam Michael, Technical Director:
Obviously this isn’t the best track for us. We took both cars through to Q2, but we weren’t strong enough to get into Q3 here. Fuji delivered a very interesting race last year, so we’ll now work towards the most advantageous strategies possible for our positions and see if we can’t get something out of the race.

Qualifying Result

Position	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3
1	L Hamilton	McLaren	-	-	1:18.404
2	K Raikkonen	Ferrari	-	-	1:18.644
3	H Kovalainen	McLaren	-	-	1:18.821
14	K Nakajima	AT&T Williams	1:18.640 (13th)	1:18.594	-
15	N Rosberg	AT&T Williams	1:18.740 (15th)	1:18.672	-