Heikki Kovalainen has praised his Lotus squad for their performance in today’s qualifying session at Spa, with the Finn making his third Q3 appearance so far this season. The former Renault and McLaren driver says he extracted the maximum from his car en route to 17th place, leaving him upbeat about his potential on Sunday.
"I think we can be very pleased with the performance today," Kovalainen said. "That last lap in Q1 was as much as I could get out of the car and to get back into Q2 is obviously a great result for the whole team.
"We had the right plan for the conditions, put it into action on track and it paid off. I don’t think I could have got any more out of the package today, so finishing where we did goes down as objective achieved for today.
"It looks like it’ll be a dry race tomorrow, and I think the key for us is to make sure both cars finish."
Team-mate Jarno Trulli, who starts from 19th, added: "Another good day for the team and congratulations for Heikki for getting back into Q2. For me it was looking pretty good until traffic pretty much ruined my second run, but the car felt good as the track was drying up and we were definitely on the right strategy for the conditions.
"It’s a shame we couldn’t make the most of it, but when everyone’s out like that trying to get times in you’re always going to have some issues with traffic, and it’s unlucky it hit my last run in Q1 today."
Series
Formula 1
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Heikki Kovalainen
Jarno Trulli
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  S. Vettel | Red Bull | 01:48.298 | 22 |
| 2. | L. Hamilton | McLaren | 01:48.730 | 21 |
| 3. | M. Webber | Red Bull | 01:49.376 | 23 |
| 4. | F. Massa | Ferrari | 01:50.256 | 21 |
| 5. | N. Rosberg | Mercedes | 01:50.552 | 23 |
| 6. | J. Alguersuari | Toro Rosso | 01:50.773 | 24 |
| 7. | B. Senna | Lotus Renault | 01:51.121 | 24 |
| 8. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 01:51.251 | 22 |
| 9. | S. Perez | Sauber | 01:51.374 | 24 |
| 10. | V. Petrov | Lotus Renault | 01:52.303 | 23 |
| Full results | ||||
| Jarno Trulli | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| More Jarno Trulli photos | |||
| Heikki Kovalainen | |||
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| More Heikki Kovalainen photos | |||
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