Saturday, May 28, 2011

Monaco Grand Prix


Monaco Grand Prix

There was no end to Force India's qualifying woes as Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil yet again failed to go beyond Q2 and settled for 14th and 15th positions respectively for Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix of the Formula Oneon Saturday.

Force India's pointless streak is likely to continue with this qualifying position since overtaking on the twisty street track is very difficult.

The qualifying session was marred by Sergio Perez's accident while exiting the tunnel. The Sauber driver hit the right-side barriers and was taken off the track quickly for treatment and was reportedly safe. The session was red flagged with two minutes and 26s remaining.

By that time, Red Bull's defending champion Sebastian Vettel was leading.

When the session resumed, Vettel held on to lead and claimed his fifth pole of the season as he clocked the fastest lap in 1m 13.556s.

McLaren's Jenson Button (1m 13.997) was second while Red Bull's Mark Webber was third (1m 14.019s).

Perez will start Sunday's race on 10th.

Meanwhile India's Narain Karthikeyan finished 23rd, ahead of his last-placed Hispania teamate Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Sutil felt he could have done much better than what was the outcome of the qualifying session.

"It's disappointing that we couldn't fight for Q3, but the pace was not there today. I was bit unlucky on my last run in Q2 when Petrov wasn't watching his mirrors and I had to abort one of my flying laps.

"I did another lap, but my tyres were going off by then and so I probably could have been a little bit higher up," Sutil said.

Paul Di Resta said his result was on expected lines. "Once again I think that P14 is a fair reflection of our pace this weekend. Everybody knows that qualifying is very important here and so I pushed hard to get as high up the grip as possible, but the race is long and anything can happen tomorrow afternoon," he said.

Deputy team Principal Robert Fernley said they had hoped to go into Q3.

"The qualifying session at Monaco is arguably the most important of the year because we know how hard it is to overtake around here.

"So we went all out today to get both cars as high up the grid as possible and hoping we might squeeze through to Q3. In the end we just missed out, but all the times were incredibly close with just a few tenths making the difference," he said.

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