Sebastian Vettel, 3rd: “It was difficult session for us. We didn’t get into qualifying how we would like and the rhythm wasn’t there straight away. We burned more tyres than we thought in the beginning, so we only had one new set for Q3. The run we had was okay, but I didn’t get the same feeling that I got at the end of Q2, which was a surprise, so we didn’t seem to go with the track and make another step. Romain was in reach, but Lewis was another step. We know it’s difficult to overtake here, but hopefully we will have a good start. Tyre management will be crucial.”
Mark Webber, 11th: “I was happy with the car this morning, I was quick in P3, but I didn’t feel happy on that last set of soft tyres in Q2 and struggled against my scrub time, which is a bit bizarre. The field is tight at the moment and it’s disappointing to qualify in P11 obviously. Our race pace should be okay tomorrow.”
Christian Horner: “A very busy qualifying session. Both drivers made it through Q1 on the hard tyre and were able to abort the beginning of their timed laps on the softer compound, which they then ran at the beginning of Q2. Mark posted a good time, but wasn’t below our own cut off, so both drivers went out again in Q2. Sebastian managed to improve; unfortunately the lap time didn’t come from Mark – there was only 3 tenths (of a second) between P2 and P11, but that was where Mark’s qualifying ended. Sebastian had one set of tyres left, so we decided to run in the middle of the session and a strong lap from him puts him P3 on the grid for tomorrow’s race. I think P2 would have been our optimum today – Lewis’ time over a single lap was unreachable, but we’re confident we’ve got a good race car.”
(Renault) Cyril Dumont: “That was a really tough session. Mark missed out getting into Q3 by a very small margin. For Seb, we could have got P2 today, but I think P1 too quick. We know we need lots of drivability for this race, so that’s what we’ve been working on this weekend. We have some strong competition tomorrow, so let’s see what we can so.”
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