From this race…

Jaguar

The half-shaft failure in de la Rosa?s car.
Pedro de la Rosa was forced to retire from the race on lap thirty-one. Pitting from last place the Jaguar came into problems rejoining the race. Pedro got away very slowly before pulling over where pit lane blended in with the circuit. A half-shaft failure was the cause of the retirement.

“I knew that this was going to be a hard race, but I am disappointed to have retired,” explained de la Rosa. “Our reliability to date has been very good and it is frustrating to have exited the race with a mechanical problem. Having finished the first three races, however, a retirement was on the books at some point, I suppose.”

“In horrendous weather conditions like this, it highlights the need to re-address the regulations on the numbers of tyre sets we are permitted to use. If the whole weekend proves to be wet, we will not have enough wet tyres to get through our job list before race day,” Pedro said. “The grooved tyre regulation of having three sets available on a Friday should also be applied to the wets. Today, for example, we have been hanging around for fear of not wanting to waste a set of tyres. A total of seven wet sets also includes the intermediates and this isn’t enough. If we had used three sets today, for example, that would leave us with a total of four to cover tomorrow’s warm-up, qualifying and the race. The fans deserve to see more cars on the track and this regulation isn’t conducive to achieving maximum mileage in wet conditions.”

“Overall, I’m happy that we did a good job today. I was pleased with the balance and the performance of the car this morning, which meant we could complete good race preparation work,” Trulli said. “The track was a little strange this afternoon, but the car was still handling well until I made a mistake on one of my timed laps and spun, losing the front wing. Even so, it’s been a positive day, and I’m confident that we can be competitive if it rains for the race.”

“My understanding is that you are allowed to make a defensive move,” Coulthard said. “But you are not allowed to make a move that hinders the opportunity for the car trying to overtake you to overtake you. I’ve watched that incident (in Brazil) repeatedly and to me Michael clearly makes a deliberate swerving manoeuvre to the left after his initial manoeuvre to block Montoya. That isn’t what the regulations say you are allowed to do. That could at least have been treated as an incident, (the stewards could) maybe have called him up and talked about it. But it was a clear ‘no incident’ and that sends out a confusing message.”

“I lost my first run and a set of tyres along with it. I wasn’t happy with the balance of the T-car so that slowed me down later on,” Bernoldi said. “I was a bit quicker on my last run but was held up which is a shame as I feel I could have beaten both the Jaguars today.”

“Clearly a disappointing qualifying session, especially here in Italy and after yesterday’s encouraging performance. The situation is simply that we are on the limit of our performance, although I believe I would have qualified higher had I not had the hydraulic problems with my racecar,” Fisichella said. “When I took the T car out it did not feel as good as my car. I hope to have a better day tomorrow and finish the race, if possible in the points.”

“We did our best today and I feel I got the utmost out of the car. We seem to lose most of our time in the middle sector but we don’t really know why yet,” Raikkonen said. “I had a small spin at Rivazza when I ran wide during my third run and had to go back into the pits. I don’t know what to expect from the race, but we will aim for a podium.”

“We can be reasonably happy as we are very close to Ferrari. I failed to improve my time in the last run due to a mistake,” Ralf explained. “Last year I started third here and I had my first victory in F1, so why couldn’t it be the same this year? A good strategy can take you everywhere. Lots can happen in a race but whatever happens tomorrow, we will try to get some points. It is a promising position for tomorrow.”

“It was a frustrating qualifying session to say the least. The weather conditions were far drier than we expected this morning and although this helped the R3, we could certainly have done with higher temperatures in order to extract the best from the tyre package,” he said. “The Michelin tyre always works better in hotter conditions and with this being an aero circuit, we are having big problems in generating any heat into the tyres. The team and I will be working hard to provide the optimum set- up for the race tomorrow. Unless something extraordinary happens, we won’t kid ourselves into thinking about points tomorrow.”

“I was a bit handicapped at the outset by never having driven this circuit in the dry,” Yoong said. “I felt I had it sorted after the second 45-minute session this morning, but I underestimated the levels of grip available here in the dry with the car in qualifying trim. I’m particularly sorry for the guys, who worked really hard to get me in the race. It’s very disappointing.”

“It was a little bit brief but there was no drive in the gearbox and we tried it again in the pits but there was nothing there,” McNish explained.

“A disappointing end to the weekend,” Sato sighed. “I was on my fourth lap with everything working fine until then, when suddenly I felt a problem with the gear which left me stuck in first gear. I made it back to the pits and the team tried to set the electrics, but the same problem re-occurred as soon as I went out so I had to pull over and retire from the race.”

“I thought that the team had called me in on the radio for my first stop, but it turned out that they hadn’t. So when I arrived at the pits nothing was ready, and I had to come in again three laps later,” Heidfeld explained. “Then I got a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. That was annoying, because I felt that the Renaults were holding us up in the early laps even though my car was oversteering quite a bit. It was better on a low fuel load, but with four stops, what can you do? Altogether, a frustrating afternoon.”

“I had a tough start to the race as, while I was defending my position from Fisichella, his teammate Sato got past,” Heinz-Harald explained. “I managed to retake him on the next lap though. The car felt good until I experienced a sudden loss of power a couple of laps before I was due to come in for my pit-stop. We have a lot of work to do at Silverstone next week.”

Irvine told the Sun Newspaper: “I might be older than Rubens but I’ll never be as ugly. He is just being over-emotional as usual. I had already let Ralf by and I looked in the mirror and saw Rubens coming and was quite prepared to do the same for him. I always race fairly and had nothing to gain in holding him up. But he didn’t take the initiative. He should learn to count because it was only two corners later that I let him by.”

“My traction control went early on in the race and then I lost fourth gear just after my pit stop. It is my first retirement this year, but it has been a difficult weekend with handling problems,” Salo explained. “The Michelin tyres have been good, but our car has not been making the most of them. We now test in Mugello where we have lots to do.”

“I knew that this was going to be a hard race, but I am disappointed to have retired,” explained de la Rosa. “Our reliability to date has been very good and it is frustrating to have exited the race with a mechanical problem. Having finished the first three races, however, a retirement was on the books at some point, I suppose.”

“Despite a relatively problem-free weekend we didn’t achieve a consistent balance on my car, which is something we will have to work on,” Panis said. “I was hoping to at least finish the race today in order to bring the team some valuable data, but unfortunately the throttle linkage problem cut the engine on my forty-fourth lap.”

“A fairly uneventful race for me,” explained Raikkonen “The car was handling pretty well, but we just didn’t have the speed to be at the front. The team told me to retire after the exhaust broke, and they detected hot gasses on the suspension. We will continue to work on improving the package and hopefully we will see results soon.”

“It certainly was not the best weekend we’ve had. I knew that we were going to struggle with this circuit as the temperatures are never as high here as we would like, but given our reliability record, I did not expect to retire,” Eddie said.

“I was approaching ‘Rivazza’, shifted down, and had no power so had to pull off the track,” the Brazilian driver said. “For sure it is disappointing to have my race cut short as I was enjoying myself out there today.”

Brawn said: “You try and keep cool and look after everything because you can get paranoid at that stage of the race, and everything had gone so well. Drop the revs, drop the temperature and just take everything easy. We did a couple of changes to his wheel that we didn’t do what we expected them too. We turned the revs down, and we changed the control, but it didn’t respond, so we were a little bit worried that we might have had a problem. So we put the spare wheel to one side just in case.”

“I just made a sign that told him to go to hell! Considering that he is the one that talks so much in the briefings and everything – bla, bla, bla – it’s odd that he goes and holds me up for three-quarters of a lap. When he let Ralf by, in a nice way, he could have let me by at the same place but he came back in and stayed there for another five or six corners. It was just silly, that’s all. But he’s getting old,” seethed Barrichello as he slated Irvine after the race.