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Mercedes frustrated with double Q2 elimination
26 June 2010
It was a somewhat disastrous Saturday for the Mercedes factory team in Valencia as Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher could manage no more than 12th and 15th on the grid ahead of tomorrow’s European Grand Prix.
Schumacher’s qualifying session started with immediate danger in Q1, just managing to jump into the second phase after narrowly avoiding an early elimination. The 7-time World Champion, who suffered from an expected power steering issue which pulled the car to one side, then recorded his worst grid position of the season so far.
“Obviously I am disappointed with my position today and it is certainly not where I want to be,” he said at the track which so nearly saw him make a comeback with Ferrari last year. “I had to fight with two things.
“Firstly, as in Canada, we have a general problem with the tyres and we can't get them to work in qualifying. Secondly, I had some difficulties with the brakes and I was locking the front right all the time - this made things extra difficult and is something we need to understand.
“However, our new updates are definitely an advantage although this was not evident in the performance. I could have gone maybe three tenths quicker on my last lap if Buemi had not been in the way but it would still not have been enough for Q3.”
Rosberg’s weekend started well, by leading the Practice 1 timesheets on Friday, although the younger German could manage no more than a mid-grid starting place.
“It's very frustrating to be so far back on the grid although my lap was good today,” he commented. “There was just no more performance to get out of the car. It's not easy to understand what happened, as we hoped to take a step forward here but we haven't got the best of our updates yet.” |
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Post time 22-6-2010 02:00 PM
