Kazuki's Chinese Blog: Saturday

Posted on Sunday 19 Apr 2009 and tagged with kazuki, blog.

Formula One is amazingly close this year. This afternoon I qualified 15th for the Chinese Grand Prix, yet my fastest time in Q2 was only 0.1s shy of a place in Q3. Five cars all within 0.1s! Just a tiny bit too much wheelspin at the exit of a corner and suddenly you’re sliding down the order.

At least the FW31 is working well around the Shanghai International Circuit. Nico and I have had a slight issue with tyre warm-up, but that seems to have been the case with all of the cars except the Red Bull, and we’ve managed to improve the situation on our car from session to session.

Away from the racetrack, I had dinner with a few Japanese friends this evening. They are studying in Shanghai and we went to a Japanese restaurant near the Sheraton, where I’m staying. They love Formula One and wanted to know all the latest developments: diffuser-gate, slick tyres – everything!

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s race, it looks like at least part of it will be wet. That should make it interesting but, most importantly, it should make the race much more open. I have a lot of fuel in my car, so let’s see what happens.