Karen Minier

Fisichella, Coulthard gearing up for A1GP?

3 May, 2008

A1 GP promoter Tony Teixeira claims four members of the formula one fraternity are looking at setting up teams in his open-wheeler series. Although refusing to confirm whether David Coulthard and Giancarlo Fisichella are contemplating getting behind Scottish and Italian outfits respectively, the South African said he would "welcome" their involvement.

The Daily Express newspaper reports that both veteran grand prix drivers are "examining the business profile" of A1's forthcoming season, which from next year will boast Ferrari-made and powered cars. “I can't talk names, but we have had four F1 people in touch,” Teixeira, in England for the finale of the 2008 series, confirmed. “And I would welcome people like Fisi and Coulthard. We have an open door.”

Teixeira also revealed that F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was "totally dumbfounded" when he heard that grand prix pacesetter Ferrari was to become intimately involved in the A1 GP series, "and then offered respect for the deal". Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror said Red Bull "dismissed claims" that Coulthard could be ousted by the F1 team this season after a spate of crashes.

Turkish Grand Prix

1st Free Practice

1 F. Massa 1:27.323 16

2 H. Kovalainen 1:27.456 17

3 L. Hamilton 1:27.752 15

4 F. Alonso 1:28.284 16

5 J. Button 1:28.919 12

6 K. Nakajima 1:29.002 19

7 N. Heidfeld 1:29.024 21

8 R. Barrichello 1:29.068 11

9 N. Piquet jr. 1:29.082 23

10 T. Glock 1:29.103 19

11 J. Trulli 1:29.329 24

12 R. Kubica 1:29.330 7

13 N. Rosberg 1:29.367 20

14 A. Sutil 1:29.756 23

15 G. Fisichella 1:29.811 23

16 M. Webber 1:30.088 21

17 D. Coulthard 1:30.340 13

18 S. Bourdais 1:30.388 19

19 S. Vettel 1:30.426 21

20 K. Räikkönen 1:30.732 3

Turkish Grand Prix

2nd Free Practice

1 K. Räikkönen 1:27.543 30

2 L. Hamilton 1:27.579 31

3 F. Massa 1:27.682 29

4 D. Coulthard 1:27.763 24

5 H. Kovalainen 1:27.954 27

6 R. Kubica 1:28.431 29

7 J. Trulli 1:28.619 29

8 K. Nakajima 1:28.664 27

9 F. Alonso 1:28.681 26

10 N. Heidfeld 1:28.817 31

11 J. Button 1:28.826 28

12 T. Glock 1:28.849 26

13 N. Rosberg 1:28.907 29

14 G. Fisichella 1:29.008 35

15 R. Barrichello 1:29.024 22

16 N. Piquet jr. 1:29.212 26

17 S. Vettel 1:29.462 30

18 S. Bourdais 1:29.630 32

19 M. Webber 1:29.633 4

20 A. Sutil 1:30.832 9

Turkish Grand Prix

3rd Free Practice

1 M. Webber 1:27.030 16

2 F. Alonso 1:27.172 13

3 D. Coulthard 1:27.193 15

4 N. Rosberg 1:27.365 16

5 F. Massa 1:27.530 13

6 J. Trulli 1:27.614 15

7 L. Hamilton 1:27.658 18

8 T. Glock 1:27.733 22

9 J. Button 1:27.766 16

10 N. Piquet jr. 1:27.781 14

11 K. Räikkönen 1:27.837 14

12 H. Kovalainen 1:27.849 13

13 S. Vettel 1:27.899 18

14 R. Barrichello 1:27.946 14

15 S. Bourdais 1:27.948 17

16 R. Kubica 1:27.971 16

17 K. Nakajima 1:28.301 14

18 G. Fisichella 1:28.573 18

19 N. Heidfeld 1:28.655 19

20 A. Sutil 1:29.131 19

Turkish Grand Prix

Qualifying

1 F. Massa 1:27.617

2 H. Kovalainen 1:27.808

3 L. Hamilton 1:27.923

4 K. Räikkönen 1:27.936

5 R. Kubica 1:28.390

6 M. Webber 1:28.417

7 F. Alonso 1:28.422

8 J. Trulli 1:28.836

9 N. Heidfeld 1:28.882

10 D. Coulthard 1:29.959

11 N. Rosberg 1:27.012

12 R. Barrichello 1:27.219

13 J. Button 1:27.298

14 S. Vettel 1:27.412

15 T. Glock 1:27.806

16 K. Nakajima 1:27.547

17 N. Piquet jr. 1:27.568

18 S. Bourdais 1:27.568

19 G. Fisichella 1:27.807

20 A. Sutil 1:28.325

Red Bulls happily in top ten

Both Red Bull Racing cars made it into the final qualifying session and the top ten for tomorrow's Turkish Grand Prix. Mark Webber led the way in sixth and Coulthard ended up tenth.

"It's good to get P6 today, after letting the team down yesterday with a bit of a shunt," said Webber. "The only downside of today's result is that we're on the left-hand side of the grid, but, apart from that, it went very well. We're in reasonable shape to get some good points tomorrow, we'll just have to keep our nose clean and have good clean pit stops. It's going to be an interesting race, the team has done a great job today - to get both cars into Q3 was a good effort."

Coulthard commented, "I'm happy to be through to the top ten after problems at the last two grands prix. We used all our option tyres to get there though, two sets in Q1 and two sets in Q2, as I didn't want to take any risks. As a result, we only had primes left at the end. We only did one run in Q3 as we wanted to save fuel, so the car was very heavy."

Team boss Christian Horner added, "A strong team performance in this morning's practice was converted into solid grid positions this afternoon for tomorrow's race. Mark used his head in the final session (Q3) and aborted a lap he wasn't entirely happy with, which meant he saved a lap of fuel. He then did an excellent lap and extracted everything from the car on option tyres to get P6. David did an excellent job to get comfortably through to Q3. As he had no soft tyres left for his final run, we were always adopting a strategic game with him. It was a strong team performance."

Honda misses out on top ten

Following a frustrating qualifying session at Istanbul Park, the Honda team will start tomorrow's Turkish Grand Prix from the sixth and seventh rows of the grid. Rubens Barrichello will line up in 12th place and Jenson Button 13th, after the pair set lap times less than 0.1s apart.

"It was a good effort from everyone today however unfortunately we are not as fast as we thought we might be here in Turkey," said Barrichello. "It is a balance problem, rather than the tyres or grip levels, and I believe we achieved the best that we could today. I could not get the car to perform well over the whole lap. The first and second sector were good, but the third sector was not working for us. Realistically this is where the car is at the moment. We need another step to make us a regular qualifier into Q3."

Button commented, "I have to be reasonably pleased with 13th as we were struggling to get the tyres working in qualifying today. Q1 was not too bad and we completed both runs on the prime tyre. We switched to the option for my first run in Q2 as everyone seemed to be going quicker on that tyre but for some reason the option didn't work for me and I had no grip. So we went back to the prime which should be about three-tenths slower around here so 13th is not too bad. It's annoying that we can't get the option to work but our prime tyre pace is very good, particularly over longer runs."

Honda chief engineer Steve Clark added, "The issues we had were with the tyres and trying to get grip from the prime or a balance on the option tyre. We saw this morning that the two tyres behaved differently and the two drivers split their strategy in Q1 because of this. In the second session neither car had the pace to get into the top ten. We had no problems aside from being able to get the most out of the tyres, so obviously this is a disappointment as we felt that we had made a little more progress here."

Turkish Grand Prix

Turkish Grand Prix

Turkish Grand Prix

Turkish Grand Prix

Turkish Grand Prix

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