Formula One news

Disappointing qualifying for Spyker

The Spyker team drivers had a relatively shorter day than hoped for today. Only able to complete one installation lap of the Fuji Speedway this morning as free practice was delayed and eventually cancelled due to inclement weather conditions, the duo were then disappointingly eliminated in the first 15 minute Qualifying segment. 

"Yesterday was much better than today," said Sutil. "We had no real running in the morning in the rainy conditions, so it was hard to set-up the car. We hoped that we would go better but we had so much understeer in the high speed corners, there was no way we could carry the speed through. When the car is wrong it is difficult to do anything in Qualifying; you just have to live with it, but we will check what the problems were and work overnight to be ready for the race tomorrow.'

Sakon Yamamoto commented, "Today was a strange day as the morning session was cancelled after we had done just one installation lap and we had to go without any data into Qualifying. We tried the extreme weather tyres and I felt the track conditions might allow more grip with wets so we changed, but I struggled to get a good balance on the car and couldn't improve my times. It is a shame, but as always I am going to try to do my best in the race."

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer added, "Today we had a very disappointing Qualifying session. After the running yesterday we expected to be much more competitive, but in the wet conditions we just had far too much understeer and weren't able to adjust the balance with the limited time. We now have to look to get a better performance for the race, but with the expected wet weather conditions tomorrow anything could happen."

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