TNT Sports
Heikki takes Monaco pole
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Published 20/05/2005 at 12:39 GMT+1
GP2 championship leader Heikki Kovalainen will start Saturday's race from pole position after setting the pace in a hard-fought qualifying session on Friday. The Finn clocked a best time of 1:24.665 to beat Gimmi Bruni into second by 0.056 seconds with Adam Carroll just 0.086 seconds back in third.
Eurosport
Image credit: TNT Sports
In a session filled with tension and excitement, it was the Finn who rose to the top to claim two extra points for his championship campaign, and re-establish himself at the head of the drivers' table.
Olivier Pla (DPR) completed row two with Scott Speed (iSport International) and local boy Clivio Piccione (Durango) lining up on the third row, and Nico Rosberg (ART Grand Prix) and Giorgio Pantano (Super Nova International) on row four.
Neel Jani (Racing Engineering) and Nicolas Lapierre (Arden International) rounded out the top ten.
The session was full of incident, as the drivers searched for every thousandth of a second around the notoriously tough streets of the Principality. Ernesto Viso (BCN Competicion) came to grief early on, as he touched the barriers at Turn One and spun out.
Olivier Pla, too, ended his session in the barriers. In the closing stages of the session he set the quickest first sector time of the day, but pushed just a touch too hard at Portier and finished his qualifying efforts with a broken car.
Nelson Piquet Jr (Hitech Piquet Sports) also had a tough time. A collision between the Brazilian and Can Artam (iSport International) on the run down to Mirabeau saw Piquet's front left suspension damaged. Piquet was unable to continue, and was left inconsolable.
1st Heikki Kovalainen –“It wasn't a fantastic lap but it was good enough for pole which is important, of course. Everyone will say I could have done a better lap, but there's so little time for practice that you can't push to the limit straight away.
"It's just important not to make any mistakes. The car was good straight away, and with the new gear ratios it's working well. I'm looking forward to the race, and to making a good start.”
2nd Gianmaria Bruni –“It was quite a good qualifying for me. Unfortunately I got some traffic on my quickest lap and lost some time in the final corners as I had to back off. For sure I could be faster, but what you need in Monaco is to be on the front row, so maybe tomorrow we'll have another good start as we did in Barcelona and you never know.
"It's a 45-lap race, so it's pretty long. I have to say that the new tyres are mega. Bridgestone did a fantastic job. You can feel it straight away from leaving the pits, we've got more grip than I had last year in F1.”
3rd Adam Carroll –“We stuck to our plan and did what we had to do, which was to get as many laps done as possible this morning. You have to push to get a feeling for the car, and we made quite a few changes.
"I think if I was here in a Formula 3, then compared to Macau it wouldn't be so different, it would be quite easy. But because you're stepping up into one of these things, it makes it more exciting. The car has so much torque in the low gears. It's just great fun.”
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