Kovalainen falls on final fence

Heikki Kovalainen looked set to claim pole position for the European Grand Prix until running wide on the final corner of the lap in Valencia. The Finn's lap time was soon bettered by team-mate Lewis Hamilton's by just thirty-four thousandths of a second although there are no regrets for the leading Finn.

With KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) on-board both McLarens, the two Silver Arrows are likely to pull away from the pack at the start of Sunday's race on a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult. "I went over the limit," Heikki admitted. "It could have been better. In qualifying you have to go for it and, had I not pushed to the limit, I could have dropped three or four places.

"Luckily I didn't lose more than one place. It is fine, a great place to start tomorrow. We have made a good improvement my side of the garage, everyone can be pleased. The factory has been working very hard and - fingers crossed - it is paying back now."

Team principal Martin Whitmarsh has admitted that Kovalainen is fighting for his drive ahead of 2010 and that winning must be a target this weekend; Heikki knows that he is one of only four drivers on the grid to be able to make use of a certain tool to help do this. "It is very important - it's one of the good circuits, it is very good here," he said on KERS. "We can harvest a lot of energy, use it throughout the race and use maximum power, which is good. We had experimental parts in the KERS which didn't work so we went back to a normal race evolution."

Source: GP Update