“A really close session; I missed pole by just .076 seconds. My first attempt in Q3 wasn t perfect and further rain later in the session made it almost impossible to improve. On my final run, I gave it everything but there wasn t enough grip to beat Sebastian Vettel. But congratulations to him on his first pole. Nevertheless, second on the grid is still a good basis for tomorrow; our car has shown good pace in both the wet and the dry so I m feeling confident.”
LEWIS HAMILTON
“It was a joint decision to go out on wet-weather tyres at the start of Q2 – partly mine and partly my engineers . We thought it was the right way to go at the time because it was getting dryer but the grip-level was poor so I came in and switched to extremes. By the time I got out, it had begun to rain and I just missed the window when the track was at its fastest; it was also very hard to pick out the braking points. It’s the first time this has happened to me in Formula 1, so I can’t really complain – tomorrow’s another day and we still have a fighting chance to make our way up the grid. I’ll be doing the best job I can.”
RON DENNIS
“Heikki performed tremendously well this afternoon, and his P2 grid slot for tomorrow is a fully deserved reward. As for Lewis, the weather conditions made things difficult for everyone, not only us, and in addition to that we were caught out by a less-than-fully accurate weather forecast. As things turned out, there was only a narrow window of opportunity in which to cut a quick lap, and things didn’t fall kindly for Lewis.
“But the weather may be unsettled tomorrow, too, and if so he should still be in a position to score a good result even though he’ll be starting from a lowlier grid position than he would ideally have preferred. Lastly, I want to congratulate Sebastian Vettel and my old friend Gerhard Berger, of the Scuderia Toro Rosso team, on the occasion of their first ever pole position. But Heikki has a very good strategy for tomorrow so let’s see what happens.”
NORBERT HAUG
“This is exactly what should not have happened to Lewis – but we have to accept it after so many great qualifying results we had. Heikki was great and will start from the front row. Lewis s competitors are not too far away; at least this is positive. Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel and Toro Rosso on their first pole – this was a top performance. Tomorrow is another day and we will fight and be focused to do a better job and this time with both cars than today.”