Ferrari Shut Out Of The Front Row In Spain

By Dale Calkins
May 14 2006

Ferrari was unable to achieve a front row start for the Spanish Grand Prix during qualifying today, with Michael Schumacher 3rd and Felipe Massa 4th. Home crowd favorite Fernando Alonso took the pole position and his Renault team mate Giancarlo Fisichella qualified 2nd.

Ferrari Shut Out Of The Front Row In Spain	Dale Calkins
Michael Schumacher Q: 3rd - 1'14.970 Michael Schumacher came into this weekend looking for his third straight victory. After qualifying 3rd for the Spanish Grand Prix today, he should be in good shape. Unfortunately with Giancarlo Fisichella ahead of him, Renault will likely tell him to block Schumacher so Fernando Alonso can run away with the victory. Here is what the 7-Time World Champion had to say about his qualifying run in Spain: "I am quite happy with third place on the grid, as we knew we might have to lose a bit in qualifying, because we based our decision about tyres more on how they would perform in the race. So, the second row is not a big problem as we know we can expect a strong race pace. Unlike at the Nurburgring, this time, I start from the clean side of the grid. As for race strategy, there are two possibilities and now we will have to make sure we pick the best one." Felipe Massa Q: 4th - 1'15.442 Felipe Massa is also coming into this race weekend off of a strong result at the previous round, which say him place on the podium for the first time in his career. Starting fourth should indeed help him to repeat this. Here is what the Brazilian had to say after his session: "It was a good qualifying. A start from the front two rows is vital and we managed to reach this target. On my final run in Q3, I came up against a bit of traffic in the final sector, but I’m happy with the way things went. I am very confident about the race in that we know we can count on getting very consistent performance from the Bridgestone tyres." Ross Brawn Technical Director Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn, was quite pleased with today's session and also believes the team will do well in the race. Here is what Ross had to say about the qualifying session: "It was a very exciting session which kept our drivers and engineers busy right to the end. I think both Michael and Felipe did an excellent job. Obviously, you always hope to be as far forward as possible on the grid, but the cars are very good and it looks as though the Bridgestone tyres should give a strong performance over a long distance. There is good reason to be optimistic about tomorrow’s race."
May 13, 2006
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