Drivers’ quotes after qualifying

The first qualifying session of the year was won by Frenchman Yvan Muller. Eventhough the SEAT’s didn’t seem to be on the pace on friday and saturday morning, during the qualifying for the first race of the season they were all back. But tomorrow they will have a tough battle for victory with the BMW and Chevrolet drivers. TouringCarTimes got all the quotes from the drivers after qualifying.

Yvan Muller (pole position)
“Despite not having been able to test as much as I would have liked to during the winter, our work bore fruit and I’ve been improving the car slowly but steadily one session after the other. It’s a very good start to the season, but qualifying is one thing and the race is another thing. We can be very competitive on one lap but the race is much harder on the tyres. Last year we were nowhere as BMW finished 1-2-3 in both races. I hope we can do better this year. The forecasts say it will be warm tomorrow, but for us rain would be better.”

Rickard Rydell (2nd position)
“There’s no better way to start. I’m really happy to be back in the championship with SEAT, and the best way to do it is getting a place on the front row of the grid. I like the championship and having tried other categories I really enjoy the World Touring Cars. To be on the front row together with Yvan is a really good start. But just like Yvan said doing more laps with the tyres will be different. We’ve noticed that the front tyres are suffering a lot, so we’ll have to be very careful tomorrow.The turbo-diesel car makes a little bit harder to go through the race as we have to cope with the front wheel drive.”

Augusto Farfus (3rd position)
“Qualifying was a bit strange with the red flag in the middle of the session that disturbed everybody. I was on my fast lap so I had to abort and on following attempt I Jörg spun in front of me so it wasn’t a perfect situation, but to be third on the grid is good. We know that we will be quite strong in the race. We expected SEAT to be ahead in the qualifying, so let’s see for the race and try to fight for the podium.”

Gabriele Tarquini (4th position)
“There are always things to improve, but fourth place makes me feel happy, since we’ve had good teamwork; just look at the results of my team-mates. I hope to join them tomorrow in the fight for the victory.”

Nicola Larini (5th position)
“On that last lap I was really going for it, but obviously the yellow came out when a BMW had spun in the last sector and there was no more time left in the session to try again. But the car has been consistent all through the day, always being among the top five. Today I can really say that I’m confident for the championship.”

Jörg Müller (6th position)
“My 2007 Brazilian race weekend was almost perfect. However, I won’t make any predictions for tomorrow’s races. It will be difficult to overtake the SEAT diesels. But the starting position could be worse. It’s a pity that I spun shortly before the end of the session. Otherwise I could have ended up further up the grid.”

Tiago Monteiro (7th position)
“I haven’t felt comfortable at all with the car’s balance, and I haven’t been able to push harder because of the understeering. However, seventh place with times not far beyond the leaders is a good result.”

Robert Huff (8th position)
“We should have been right up the front, but on the lap where I had my good first sector Alain had an incident, quite a big incident, and I had to abort. It was a shame. The last lap was an improvement but we had a yellow flag at turn 7 so again I had abort. The speed of the turbocharged diesel cars on the straights is just ridiculous. On my fastest lap I had a perfectly fast exit out of the last turn, with one of them four or five car lengths behind me and by the end of the pitlane straight he was just inches form my rear bumper. The car is handling really well and we seem to have a good race pace. The car has the potential, last year there were a lot of problems with the understeer, and this year we have worked very hard on this and we’ve come here and had the opposite. Being eighth on the grid is of course a very good position to be in to score points in race one and maybe be on the front row of race two.”

Jordi Gené (9th position)
“I’m rather disappointed. I had problems with the front end that hindered me from setting a good time. When I brake sharply the car tends to block the tyres, and that’s something we’ll have to solve for tomorrow.”

Andy Priaulx (12th position
“In Macau last year I started from 12th place, and after the two races I was a triple world champion. Therefore I certainly will not give up fighting for a good result early in the season. On my last flyer I made a mistake in turn 7, which cost me a better position. We have not yet come to terms with the low grip level at this circuit. Now we will work hard to eliminate the problems.”

Alessandro Zanardi (14th position)
“Curitiba´s qualifying had the result that I expected: the fourteenth position is not a very exciting one but honestly there was very little to do against the advantage that Seats have at the moment thanks to the turbo and Chevrolets thanks to the “discount” of 30kg on the minimum weight.

Regarding other BMW, the gap that separates myself from my team mate is just 9 thousandths, while Priaulx is at a little bit more than a tenth. I lost a bit more ground to Jorg Muller and Farfus in a session that has been steep for all official 320si.

My perspectives for tomorrow are good anyway, especially if the weather is going to be very hot. In this case, lap after lap, we should have a performance degradation lower than that of front wheeled cars and consequently some chances to recover some positions.”

Pierre- Yves Corthals (15th position)
“It is good for me to come here and be competitive straight away, because we did not test during the winter so I am happy. Our petrol-powered cars has a different set-up compared to the other SEAT so we’ll see the way it will behave during the race.”

Ray Mallock
“Today was a good start to Rob’s and Nic’s 2008 campaigns. The speed of the turbocharged cars is a concern of course, but qualifying and racing are two completely different things so we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.”