Formula 1

De La Rosa Disappointed Not To Beat Marussia

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Pedro de la Rosa was left to rue traffic during Q1 as he qualified down in 23rd place at Hockenheim. The HRT driver felt he had the pace to finish ahead of the Marussias this afternoon but the incident late in session cost him the best part of a second and in all probability, two places on the grid.

“It could have been a very good qualifying session, because towards the end I was nine tenths under my time, but on the last two corners I had another car ahead and we lost two positions. We must all respect each other but now we have to look ahead. Leaving that aside, I think we did a good practice session this morning and a good qualifying session; the car performed well and we would have been very close to the Marussias. But the important stuff comes tomorrow and we have to focus on getting off to a good start and fighting until the end. We expect a dry race, but on the evidence of these last few days anything is possible”.

Teammate Narain Karthikeyan will start last once again but the Indian driver was happy with his performance today after struggling in the morning's practice session.

“Yesterday's FP2 was in wet conditions and today I could have done with a bit more mileage in dry as I only had one hour this morning to adapt to the circuit. But despite all this we did a good job. In qualifying we only finished three tenths off Pedro, so I'm happy. After FP3 I expected the gap to be bigger but we improved a lot before qualifying. Tomorrow we will see what happens with the weather but whatever the outcome it will be a tough battle and we will try to compete with our rivals”.

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