Saturday: Marussia confident to repeat its strong start
After the successful debuts of two of the rookies engaged in the Formula 1 World Championship, the Marussia team admits feeling confident for tomorrow's race in Malaysia, even though the qualifying session was challenging. Both drivers will start 19th and 21st.
Jules Bianchi – 20th and 19th:
« I’m obviously very happy with my qualifying lap today, but I’m still hungry for more seeing how close we were to Q2. It wasn’t easy because we struggled a lot with tire degradation. During the break, we worked to ensure we got the best settings in a single lap this afternoon and everything turned out well, especially with the weather staying fairly dry.
I’m not sure that we can expect the same dry conditions tomorrow, but we’ll see. I think we can have a very interesting race tomorrow with some show and a bit more progress compared to our position in Melbourne.
My thanks go to the team because it has been difficult to improve the car since yesterday, in this heat and humidity. I’m not sure it will be easier tomorrow, but I hope we can bring a good result for everyone as a reward.
Max Chilton – 22nd and 21st:
« Today has been a difficult day for us and unfortunately, I couldn’t do better for the qualifications. We had several questions regarding tire wear during this weekend, and these hindered our progress. It was a disadvantage in qualifying, and although the laps I did to make up for lost time were satisfactory, they were always below our real pace.
It’s rather disappointing because we know the car is high-performing, and we need to make the most out of it. My thoughts now turn to tomorrow’s race, and I am quite confident that we can beat Caterham and secure a good position.
