“To be honest I didn’t do a perfect job today, and I will study the data to see how I can go faster tomorrow. We have to stay positive, though, as we are still in a good position and anything can happen in the race.”
Timo Glock:
“I’m happy to have made Q3, but that was a difficult qualifying for me. In free practice this morning I had a better feeling for the option tyres in a qualifying set-up, but this afternoon I struggled to get the most out of them again; it was difficult to find the right set-up for it. In the end I was happy that I had a really good lap and a really good last sector to get into the top ten.
“Now we have to see how the weather goes, but if it’s dry it will be hard for me to get the most out of the tyres. This is a really wide circuit and that means there are more possibilities to overtake, but I’m keeping a lid on my expectations. Hopefully we can finish in the top ten or break into the points. That would be a good result.”
Jenson Button:
“I’m happy with P11 and to be starting on the right side of the grid for the race. The weather was looking changeable with the risk of rain, so we ran early in both sessions to get a banker time in. My final run in the second session was on the option tyres, and I’m really happy with the lap as we just missed out on going through by less than 0.1sec.
“The main challenge was choosing between the prime and the option tyre. I was struggling to get the options to work so I was running on the primes for most of the session, but pretty much everyone else was on the option tyre. So with that much option rubber going down on the track, we had to give it a go for my last run in Q2, and we were 0.25s quicker. That was as quick as the car is today and I put in a good lap, so I’m pleased with our position.”
David Coulthard:
“I was a bit surprised, as in qualifying I was slower in the first sector than I had been in the morning practice. I’d lost some mechanical grip, which made it difficult to nail the middle sector. What’s happened this weekend doesn’t concern me; as a racing driver you never think you’re going to have a car failure, so you don’t think about it, and I have complete faith in the team too.”
Nelson Piquet:
“I am relatively satisfied with my qualifying this afternoon. I made good progress in the last free practice session this morning, and my qualifying went without too many problems. Of course I must still improve, but I am not too far away from my team-mate and I cannot wait to see how the race goes tomorrow. My objective will be to do better than Melbourne and to reach the end of my second grand prix, and if possible to score some points.”
Rubens Barrichello:
“It was unfortunate that we had a problem this morning with the gear selection which limited my running; therefore when you go into qualifying, you are playing catch-up all the time. However it was a good effort this afternoon, and I’m happy with how our session developed to eventually finish in 14th position. It would have been nice to have had more time this morning to set the car up a little better, but we made the best of a difficult situation.
