Doornbos outpaces former teammates

Doornbos outpaces former teammates in German GP Qualifying! At a slightly clouded Hockenheimring, Minardi-debutant Robert Doornbos qualified himself in front of both Jordan drivers together with his teammate Christijan Albers. In a solid lap, ...

Doornbos outpaces former teammates in German GP Qualifying!

At a slightly clouded Hockenheimring, Minardi-debutant Robert Doornbos qualified himself in front of both Jordan drivers together with his teammate Christijan Albers. In a solid lap, Doornbos clocked a time of 1:18.313 which handed him the 17th grid position for tomorrow's 67 lap long German Grand Prix.

Robert Doornbos.

Photo by xpb.cc.

Already in Free Practice 03 and 04, both Minardi drivers seemed more competitive than Doornbos' former teammates Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro. Together with his engineer Riccardo Adami, Doornbos booked steady progress in order to improved his fastest laptime of Friday (1:17.978) to 1:16.912.

Though the 23-year old Dutchman build in some margin in his qualifying lap at the 4,574 kilometer long track nearby Heidelberg, Minardi's new recruit can still put his PS05 with startnumber 20 on an admirable 9th starting row tomorrow afternoon!

Robert Doornbos:

"I'm pleased with my qualifying result. Both yesterday and today I mainly focussed on finding a good race set-up, and I'm happy with the continiuos progress we are making. As this qualifying format is completely new for me, I build in some margin in my flying lap compared with the outings I did this morning. I hope that both Christijan and I can maintain our pace tomorrow so we can enjoy a strong race with both Jordan drivers!"