Heikki Kovalainen, 18th: “I’m pleased with today’s performance. My last lap was quite a long way up but I made a small mistake in the final chicane which maybe cost me a couple of tenths, but it didn’t affect my position and, really, I probably got as much as I could out of the car today. Yesterday’s accident could have set us back a bit but the guys did a fantastic job to fix the car so we haven’t lost any performance at all and I was 100% confident I could push today. The track conditions have changed quite a bit from yesterday so in FP3 we had to work on dialling out some of the oversteer that comes from the hotter conditions, and tomorrow will be hotter still so I think we are in good shape to fight quite a few cars ahead of us.”
Vitaly Petrov, 19th: “I’m not all that happy with where we ended up today. In FP3 the car felt really good and I was pretty confident I could have beaten my team mate today but the temperatures rose between the end of FP3 and the start of Q1 and maybe we could have found something that would have helped manage the change in conditions better. Despite that it’s been a positive weekend so far and I know we’ll be strong tomorrow so hopefully we can have a strong race and keep building on the momentum we’re building up this year.”
Mark Smith, Technical Director: “Both drivers performed well today and we can be satisfied with where we finished in Q1. Heikki may have been able to get his car into the late 1.15s but it is unlikely he would have been able to push Ricciardo into the drop zone, but we are edging ever closer to Toro Rosso and the fact both cars finished ahead of Vergne is encouraging.
“Tomorrow will be hotter than today and we saw in Bahrain and Monaco that our car is good in the hotter conditions, and we know we have the race pace to push into the midfield battles, so the aim now is to get both cars through what will certainly be an exciting race, both on track and in the pits, and see where we end up.”
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