Formula 1

Glock ‘Wings It’ it in Monza Qualifying After DRS Issues

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Timo Glock had to contend with a faulty DRS system in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, but still managed to out-qualify his team-mate and the two HRT drivers this afternoon in Monza.

The Virgin Racing driver’s rear-wing DRS flap did not de-active correctly, and instead remained open at inconvenient points in the lap. This prevented the German from using the system later in Q1, and Glock could not mount an effective challenge to the two Team Lotus drivers.

“A disappointing qualifying,” said Glock in summary. “We had a problem with the rear wing – it just stayed open and didn't close again. Then after a certain speed it just closed on its own. We have never had a problem with it before and didn't have anything wrong yesterday, so we have to look at this and resolve it because it's not very comfortable to experience that.

“It was very difficult and frustrating because we were very close to Kovalainen today and close 'enough' I think. With the wing working properly, who knows?”

Jérôme D’Ambrosio qualified one place behind his team-mate but said that he felt comfortable in his car, and was generally pretty pleased with his efforts in Monza this afternoon. “Today's wasn't a bad qualifying and I'm generally very happy with it,” said the Belgian. “I think it was difficult to try and get a tow as there was quite a lot of traffic and that made it even harder. But I felt very comfortable again in the car and in general I'm very satisfied. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's race – it looks like it's going to be a very close one.”

Team principal John Booth says that the team will endevour to get to the bottom of the DRS issue but is optimistic of his drivers having a good race tomorrow.

“Unfortunately, we had an issue on Timo's soft tyre run with the DRS system not deactivating correctly, which cost him significant time as he effectively ran with no DRS,” explained Booth. “We spent quite a bit of time over lunch going through his rear wing in detail and found some issues which we corrected and everything seemed fine in the garage before qualifying. As is often the case with these fairly complicated systems, there can be more than one fault and during qualifying Timo again experienced the issue. We clearly have to get to the bottom of the issue before the race.

“In terms of our competitiveness, the field seems to have closed up and the gap to the guys in front does seem less. However, as always we will treat this with some caution until we get back to a more representative circuit. Given the smaller gaps in the field and hopefully with Timo's issue fixed, both drivers can look forward to what should be a more interesting race tomorrow.” 

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