German GP Saturday Arrows notes

With very changeable weather conditions, this morning's practice session got off to a wet weather tyres start for all the cars, as the track was still suffering from yesterday's downpour. It was a very good practice for the Orange Arrows team, with Pedro de la Rosa completing some very fast laps to finish the first session with the second fastest lap time and Jos Verstappen in sixteenth. Half an hour later as the second practice commenced, the track had dried enabling the drivers to revert to grooved tyres. The car set-ups were very good, and Jos finished the session in 11th with Pedro fractionally behind in 12th, although Pedro suffered a minor engine problem causing his car to slow on the last lap.

Qualifying engines were used in both A21 race cars for the second consecutive Grand Prix qualifying this season, although Pedro de la Rosa completed his initial and fastest timed lap in the spare car due to a small problem with the floor of his race car, which delayed it being ready in time for the start of qualifying. His qualifying time of 1:47.786 enabled him to take his highest to date 5th position on the grid for tomorrow's race, and also claim the record of achieving the highest qualifying position in history for a Spanish Formula 1 driver. Jos Verstappen was unfortunately unable to make it onto the track as early as the team had hoped and therefore miss the rain, due to a problem with starting his race car. This affected his qualifying position, but Jos still starts from an impressive 11th on the grid, achieved by a lap time of 1:48.321 in very wet conditions. Pedro de la Rosa
"I am very very satisfied by the whole team's work and we had the one lap at the beginning and we took our chances. It wasn't a particularly good lap compared to my previous lap times today, but then it started raining and it's a bit of a gamble when you arrive into a chicane at 320 km per hour and you don't know how wet it is, so I just took my chances. I qualified 5th in the t-car because my race car was still being prepared and we needed to get out very quickly so I took the spare car and it all worked very well. I'm really pleased for the whole team as we've always been up there, but the results and full potential of the team have never really materialised. We were a little bit lucky with the rain but we've been very unlucky in the past so that's the way it goes sometimes".

Jos Verstappen
"We had some bad luck at the beginning of qualifying as the starter wouldn't go in the car properly to be able to start the engine, so we had to take the floor off and change a part to get the starter in. That lost me a lot of positions because the car was behaving really well and at the end of the session when it was half dry, the lap time I did was good. I think qualifying was decided in the first 5 minutes before the rain and I wasn't out there then so that was a problem".

Tom Walkinshaw:
"Both Pedro and Jos did a very good job. Unfortunately Jos couldn't get out on the track when he should have because there was a problem with the car starter but he still did a good job when the track was much wetter. With the positions we've got we're in good shape for the race".