Lewis Hamilton: No pole chance against Red Bull and Ferrari in German Grand Prix – Formula 1
McLaren’s Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton has ruled out a pole position chance in the German Grand Prix of the 2011 Formula 1 season against the Ferrari and Red Bull team.
Hamilton, after taking part in the two practice sessions on Friday, stated that McLaren is still not there in pace against the Scarlet and the Milton Keynes-based car and pole position is no where near possible.
However, the Brit mentioned that the fuel load of the teams was not known in the practice session and it might be possible that in qualifiers McLaren benefit from fuel load but as far as speed of the car is concerned, McLaren are slower in qualifiers.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso started the practice session just on a high and grabbed a first position in first session and second in the second session on Friday. Although the times were not comparable to the ones expected in qualifiers but still Alonso was
stronger altogether.
Whereas McLaren’s duo, Hamilton and Jenson Button, failed to post any handsome times in the practice session and were even slower than Force India and Mercedes.
Hamilton comments, “It doesn’t look like we are able to challenge them for pole, but we also don’t know on which level of fuel load they are. We might be pleasantly surprised tomorrow to find out that we are heavier than others, and that again brings us
closer, but usually that is not the case.”
On the other hand, Hamilton stated that the race is pretty different and anything can happen.
“We see that both Ferrari and Red Bull are extremely quick, but then anything can happen in the race. And who knows if it is going to rain? During the race that is really when we can make the most damage to the leading teams,” commented Hamilton.
The third and the final practice session of the German Grand Prix will be contested on Saturday before the qualifiers and it will be interesting to see McLaren’s tactics in the practice session.
McLaren are currently second on the 2011 constructors’ championship table.