“As we know, it’s tight in the midfield and I missed out by not very much, because the rest of my lap was ok. Sébastien made it comfortably into Q2 so there is something we need to work on. The race will hopefully be a different story, after just not having the pace in qualifying.”
Giancarlo Fisichella:
“I had some problems on my first run with reduced grip and understeer, so the obvious way to go was to do two timed laps on the first run, but it did not prove to be the best solution in this case.
“It is a bit disappointing after yesterday. It was difficult to make the tyres work properly, so now we will see what will happen in the race. We’ve had some strong performances so let’s see.”
Adrian Sutil:
“I was unlucky. The first run was ok – I did a 1m23.1s, which was quite good for a first lap. On the second run the grip level was much better and I had a good feeling, but then into turn three there was a car coming out of the pits. I lost all the downforce, got some huge understeer and basically had to lift off and break up the lap as there was no point driving it after that.
“On my final run, again I had a very good first sector, but then my brake disc seemed to develop a problem and it was quite difficult to get the car to slow down for corners. It’s very disappointing as I thought it could have been one of my best qualifying sessions this season as I feel good in the car, and we looked good until that point. Let’s hope for more tomorrow.”
Anthony Davidson:
“Today was quite a tough qualifying for everyone in the team. The boys did a great job; I put a great lap together and I’m very proud of everyone and the job we have done all week. The car had quite a good balance – as good as it could be for qualifying – and I would like to personally thank my engineer Richard Lane for doing such a great job all weekend.”
Takuma Sato:
“I think we made some improvement from yesterday. The first and second runs in qualifying seemed to be getting better all the time, but I was surprised that on the very last run there was a change in balance and I had understeer. I then couldn’t improve my time as much as I wanted as it wasn’t the cleanest lap. Overall we did make the right progress, though, so it was quite a good day.”
Stefano Domenicali [Ferrari – team principal]:
“Obviously we are pleased with the result of today’s qualifying. We were expecting a very close fight and that’s what we got, to the extent that the top five are all within less than three tenths of a second of one another.
