Frank Biela (Infineon Audi R8 #1)
“The qualifying was perfect for us. This weekend every practice session
was very tight. Emanuele took his chance today. Although it was quite hot,
he drove an excellent time. Hopefully we will take our opportunity of the pole
position in the race and bring home a victory again.”
Emanuele Pirro (Infineon Audi R8 #1)
“I’m very happy about this pole position. I didn’t expect it this morning as I
have influenza and a temperature and didn’t feel absolutely in shape.
Originally I wanted to start at the very beginning of the practice, but the
officials didn’t let me out. So I had to wait for another opputunity and
obviously found the right moment.”
Rinaldo Capello (Infineon Audi R8 #2)
“Emanuele and Tom, both did a great job. It is difficult to say weather Tom
could have taken pole when he would not have had to overtake a car on his
fast lap. The time gap between our two cars is very small, the gap to our
competitors quite big. Therefore I am confident for the race.”
Tom Kristensen (Infineon Audi R8 #2)
“Unfortunately I always had some other cars in front of me during my fastest
laps and not everyone let me past at once. But the front row is still a very
good starting position and our car is perfectly prepared for the race
tomorrow.”
Johnny Herbert (ADT Champion Audi R8 #38)
“Hopefully we’ll have a good race after what has been a disappointing time
so far here at Laguna. We didn't have a lot of confidence going into
qualifying, since we’ve been slowed with a handling imbalance and
whatever we try in a bid to improve it has failed."
Stefan Johansson (ADT Champion Audi R8 #38)
“The story of the weekend is understeer for us. We have a few ideas for the
warm up, but we hope the race will turn out well for us. In the circumstances
therefore to start from fifth place on the grid is not disastrous but
nevertheless we expected a lot better.”
Ralf Jüttner, Technical Director Team Audi Sport North America
”That was a very tight qualifying with different strategies. To be honest, I
haven’t seen Emanuele’s way to wait at the exit of pitlane so far. But it
worked out fine. Tomorrow it will be important to find a quick way through all
the traffic. There are some places at Laguna Seca, for example the corner
combination “Cork Screw” , where you can loose a lot of time when you are
behind a slower car.”
Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, Head of Audi Sport
“A satisfying result: Both of our cars are in front of the grid. Behind us
Cadillac, in front of the Panoz, which were our toughest competitors during
the past two years. The qualifying of Champion was a little bit disappointing,
but the team fights with a good setup because of heavy understeer.”
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