Understeer hampers Doornbos

Robert Doornbos will start the Chinese Grand Prix tomorrow on from the 10th starting row. Understeer in Turn 13, which is followed by the long back straight, made Doornbos loose a significant amount of topspeed which was translated in a loss of ...

Robert Doornbos will start the Chinese Grand Prix tomorrow on from the 10th starting row. Understeer in Turn 13, which is followed by the long back straight, made Doornbos loose a significant amount of topspeed which was translated in a loss of approximately one second in time.

By clocking a laptime of 1:39.460 at the 5.541 kilometer long Shanghai International Circuit, the 24-year old Dutchman finished qualifying in 20th spot.

At the track where Doornbos made his Formula 1 debut last year as testdriver for Jordan Grand Prix, the rookie racedriver finished the third Free Practise session in 18th position, ahead of his teammate Christijan Albers and an unfortunate Christian Klien. In the final practice session at the modern track near Shanghai, both Minardi-drivers surprisingly shared the last four positions with the Saubers.

Robert Doornbos:

"A strange qualifying for me this time. The car actually felt quite good and I was able to push hard in the first and second sector. But when I entered Turn 13, which is followed by the long back straight, I unexpectedly suffered from massive understeer and had to lift. I lost a lot of topspeed and approximately one second in time there."

"It's a shame, because I could easily have qualified myself in front of Albers and Monteiro. Tomorrow things look much brighter though, as we qualified ourselves with a considerable amount of fuel and we should be able to gain positions."