“If all elements – team, drivers, cars – work at their best, then we can aspire to a good result. Congratulations to Felipe, who really produced an exceptional qualifying lap.”
Luca Baldisserri [Ferrari – team manager]:
“Finally, a trouble-free day! [The] car performance was good, and it worked well as can be seen from the result. There are a few unknowns regarding the various sets of tyres, which seem to be a bit up-and-down; we will have to study that carefully.
“The threat of rain meant we operated differently to usual, going out on-track at the start of all the sessions. We expect a very difficult race tomorrow because of the weather, which will be tough on cars and drivers. Clearly our aim is to do the maximum, which is to repeat this afternoon’s result.”
Pascal Vasselon [Toyota – senior general chassis manager]:
“So far the weekend has gone reasonably smoothly – including the weather, which was uncertain before qualifying. The threat of rain was there from the very beginning because showers were developing randomly in the area around the circuit, but it stayed dry and did not disturb qualifying.
“Jarno’s qualifying position is what we expected, so we are very happy with that. Today confirms yesterday’s practice where we saw that he was in very good shape both on one-lap performance and long runs, which we will check tomorrow.
“Timo also did a very good job to make it into Q3 for the second time in two races. He is finding it hard to get the most out of the tyres, but apart from that tyre handling has been quite straightforward. Both compounds are running without major problems like graining and blistering, so we can head into the race confident of converting this into a strong finish.”
Mario Theissen [BMW Sauber – motorsport director]:
“Ferrari was in a class of its own in qualifying. Behind them it was extremely tight. From P3 there were five cars within only 15 hundredths of a second. In this group we missed out on a bit of luck, so we ended up sixth and seventh. In the race tomorrow the weather will play a crucial role.”
Willy Rampf [BMW Sauber – technical director]:
“With this result we are the only team to have made it into the top ten in qualifying with both drivers for the 20th time since the end of 2006. That shows the consistency within our team. All three parts of qualifying were very exciting, because there was the continued threat of a rain shower. As a result we had to change our programme several times.
