Formula One news

Column: New qualifying not an improvement

The last race in Monaco went pretty well. It was unfortunate that I spun during the race because that is always costing you a lot of time obviously. As you've probably read here at my website I wasn't racing with power steering. I choose not to use it in Monaco because it eliminated an extra risk of car failure.

The Monte Carlo Grand Prix always sees a lot of drivers fail to finish so I wanted to do the best I could to finish the race and hopefully win some places where other drivers failed to finish. The power steering is hydraulic, so when the power steering would fail it could also give problems to the gearbox for example and my race might end too early. Usually the power steering never gives problems but it's just always a little risk, the less risk you take the bigger your chance is to finish the race.

Looking ahead to the next race at the Nürburgring I think it won't be easy to be ahead of the Jordan drivers again in qualifying. It would be fantastic obviously but we don't have as much drag in the car as the Jordan car has I think.

I know the circuit pretty well obviously because I have race at the Nürburgring during my DTM seasons. That was the shorter version of the circuit, though the F1 only has two extra corners. It might be a little advantage for me.

The new qualifying session isn't a big improvement I think. I liked the idea of two qualify sessions because on Saturday you were always able to see the strongest car since everyone was running on low fuel. Now the qualifying is all about strategy.

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