Red Bull

Mark Webber (1st, Q3 - 1m37.242s)
“It was a tight session for all of us. I think as the session unfolded, people were having different balance issues on different tyre compounds. I was happy with my lap there, it was solid and it’s good to get pole. It’s a great place to start the race from. I’m looking to get off the first corner very well, that’s important as there are two long straights after that.”

Sebastian Vettel (2nd, Q3 - 1m 37.316s)
“Overall we can be very happy with the result. We were quite quick in the first and second qualifying sessions and had a good start to Q3. On the last run, I had to back off starting the lap as Massa was there, it wasn’t his fault, but I had to back off. Nevertheless, the second lap in Q3 wasn’t good enough. I lost time in the middle sector, which seemed to be okay all weekend, but when the circuit ramped I wasn’t able to go with it, so I lost a bit, but second is a good position so start from. There are long straights near the start, so it could be interesting tomorrow.”

Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal
“For the second time in a week, it’s fantastic to have locked out the front row. Mark drove a fantastic final lap to secure the pole position by half a tenth from Sebastian, who had dominated until that point. It’s Renault’s 200th pole position, which we are delighted to have achieved with them. It’s important that we now convert this strong qualifying into plenty of points tomorrow.”

Cyril Dumont, Renault support for Red Bull
“Today is an important day. Not only have we got the front row of the grid again, but we have also scored our 200th pole position with the Renault engine. We started with Jean-Pierre Jabouille in 1979 and 500 races later we have achieved more than 40 percent of pole positions from all our Formula One qualifying sessions. That’s a very strong score for Renault. Among these 200 pole positions, more than 40 were achieved with Red Bull Racing and our two drivers, Mark and Sebastian. So, I would like to thank everyone at Red Bull, both drivers and everyone working at our factory at Renault.”

Lotus

Kimi Raikkonen (5th, Q3 - 1m 37.625s)
“Qualifying was okay and I think we did the best we could have done. We tried some different things on the car over the weekend and qualified in a reasonably good position, but of course you always want to go faster. The new exhaust system feels good; you do lose a little horsepower from it but it’s better on the aero side and you can’t get something for nothing. The gap to the cars at the front is not too much so we’ll try to do what we can tomorrow.”

Romain Grosjean (7th, Q3 - 1m 37.934s)
“It was a bit of a strange qualifying session for me to be honest; In Q1 the car felt nowhere, in Q2 it was good, then in Q3 it wasn’t fantastic either so we need to spend some time analysing what happened. The track changed a little and the tyres felt slightly different so we need to understand that. For sure there will be a lot of attention on my start tomorrow; I know my objectives and I think we’re capable of a good result.”

Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
“It looks like our new package is working as it should. We’re reasonably happy with today’s performance and it looks like our new package is working as it should. We’ve clearly taken a step forward and getting both cars solidly into Q3 is satisfying.

“We have made clear performance gains and there’s still further improvement to come from (the new Coanda exhaust) once we have optimised the set-up. Kimi had great pace in Q1 to go through with a single run on the soft tyre whereas Romain needed a set of the super softs to be sure of getting into Q2, but from then on we were confident of getting both cars into Q3. The advantage from the new Coanda exhaust system on Kimi’s car confirms that we will run it on both for the next race.

“After some difficulties with front tyre graining yesterday we now have both the soft and super-soft compounds working well. We’ve seen track improvement and have also found a better set-up to make improvements in this area. Pirelli say one stop is possible, which is something we’ll have a good close look at.”