Team reaction after qualifying in Hungaroring (part 1)

Red Bull Renault

Sebastian Vettel: “It was a very good day for us. We have felt comfortable all weekend and I think we were able to improve overnight also. I said on the radio to the team on my in-lap, “Mark and I were pushing hard to finish first and second, but this is your moment, enjoy it – you built this wonderful car’. It’s a pleasure to drive and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. It was quite a difficult session today. I didn’t have a good run in Q2 on the option tyre and didn’t feel 100 percent. There’s not really much you can do to the car between Q2 and Q3, just little trims, but it worked quite well and I had a lot of confidence in Q3. I was able to go quite a bit quicker, so it was a good step. I’m happy to be on pole; hopefully we have a good start tomorrow and a good race.”

Mark Webber: “Sebastian did a good job. We have pushed each other most of the weekend, but he put Q3 together well.
The tyres are the gold thing around here – you need to get them just right, understand them and then nail the lap, they can be pretty sensitive at times. We’ll see how we go tomorrow, it’s a long race and I’m in a good
position to get some good points. The first three seconds of the race can be crucial and can deliver 70 per cent of the result.”

Christian Horner: “It was a fantastic team performance today. The team and both drivers did a fantastic job to secure a dominant front row lock out. Grid position is very important here, it’s also one of the
longest runs to the first corner, so we’re starting the Grand Prix in the best possible positions. Hopefully we can have a successful race tomorrow.”

Fabrice Lom (Renault): ”Our eleventh pole position. We really have a quick car this year and have
been such a strong force on Saturdays. We have to build on this performance tomorrow and take advantage
to score the maximum points tomorrow. It’s not a difficult track for engines here and power is not the most
important factor – I hope we convert this to a one / two result.”

Ferrari

Stefano Domenicali: "First of all, we wish to offer our respects, along with all Italian sport, for the recent death of two Italian soldiers in Afghanistan, where they were part of a peace-keeping mission, representing our country abroad with honour. We are pleased with this result because it is the most we could reasonably have expected from this qualifying session. Certainly the gap to the top is very significant and it’s incredible to see how the picture can change in the space of one week: from a gap of two thousandths, we have gone to 1"2 seconds on the same tyres and with almost identical cars to those raced in Germany. Probably, we were not that close in Hockenheim and we are not that far off here: as they said in Ancient Rome, ’in medio stat virtus.’ I wish to congratulate both our drivers who got the very most out of the car’s potential. Now we must concentrate on the race which will be very long and tough, both in terms of reliability and for the drivers: here the slightest mistake carries a high price. Our aim is to try and make up as much ground as possible in both championships."

Fernando Alonso: "I am pleased with my qualifying lap and with the performance of our car, as I don’t think I could have done better today. The Red Bulls proved to be very strong and the gap to them is certainly a surprise. Having said that, we have to remain focussed on our work and try to do the maximum, aiming at getting on the podium. We must bear in mind that the leaders in both championships are behind us on the grid and our aim is to make up ground on their points total. The start will be very important. Usually at this track, starting on the clean side brings a clear advantage, but this year we have seen good starts from the dirty side and bad ones from the clean: it will be vital to do everything as well as possible and then we will see where we are at the end of the first lap. At that point we can also decide whether to have an attacking race or to manage the situation. The circuit is very demanding for cars and drivers and you must not lose concentration for a moment."

Felipe Massa: "When you are gapped by over a second in qualifying, there is always something to think about: the way in which they make their tyres work on the first lap is especially incredible and their aerodynamics help them so much in some corners, especially in changes of direction. In the race, the situation can be different, but clearly we cannot claim that we will be quicker on track. However, overall, we have to be pleased with this result because, all the same, we are ahead of everyone else. I did not produce a perfect lap: with these tyres you have to drive extremely precisely because you can easily run the risk of going off the ideal line. The start will be very important and, unfortunately, I am on the dirty side of the grid: let’s see what we can do. The race will be very long and as always, anything can happen. What did I feel today, thinking of events one year ago? During qualifying, I did not think about it for a moment, as I had too much to do in the car, but now, I can tell you it’s a nice feeling being here having completed qualifying! Today, Professor Robert Veres was in our garage, one of the doctors who looked after me when I was in the AEK hospital and I was very pleased to have him here with me."

Chris Dyer: "A good job from both our drivers who today were able to extract all the potential available to them from the car. Honestly, I do not think we could have aspired to a better result: we definitely did not have the speed to fight for the front row, however, we managed reasonably comfortably to lock out the second one. Given the situation on the grid, I am almost very slightly disappointed that one of our rivals did not manage to go quicker than Felipe, so that he could start from the clean side! We will try and get a good start and to get amongst the cars starting ahead of us: if we manage it, the race could turn out to be interesting."

McLaren Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton: “I’m happy with today’s result. I was relieved to get into Q3 – it was very close – and I feel I pulled every last drop out of the car. So I’m satisfied with the job we did today.

“Obviously, we’ll have to work hard again tomorrow – but, all things considered, it’s a good place for us to be starting from tomorrow: it’s on the clean side of the track, which is a positive, and it’s a long haul down to Turn One. So anything’s possible. As I say, I’m quite happy.

“Our car is the best it’s ever been at this circuit. And we’ll stay focused for tomorrow: I need to get as good a start as I’ve been getting for the past few races, stay clean, get around the first corner and keep moving forwards after that.

“It would be great to make up some places off the grid because it’s very hard to overtake around here. But we’ll do the best job we can. I’m ready for it. Bring it on!”

Jenson Button: “In practice this morning, the car was working pretty well and I felt quite happy with it. We were still some way off the top two teams, but the overall pace wasn’t too bad.

“This afternoon, I still felt pretty happy on the Prime tyre, and ended Q1 seventh-fastest. But I just couldn’t find a balance on the Option tyre and I struggled for grip with it.

“The good thing is that I’ll be starting on the clean side of the track. Normally, that can make you up a place or two at the start, and there’ll be lots of opportunities into the first corner, which is always exciting here. Plus, I’ve got two new sets of tyres for the race.

“So we can still do a lot from 11th – and I’ll do my very best to pick up some valuable world championship points from there.

“I suppose you could say we’ve just got to be brave tomorrow.”

Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal: “Lewis did a fantastic job to qualify immediately behind the Red Bulls and the Ferraris – and, in fact, had he not lost a little time on the second sector of his best lap, it’s just possible that he may even have been able to pip Felipe [Massa] for fourth.

“Having said that, P5 puts him on the clean side of the track for tomorrow’s race, and you can be well sure he’ll be his usual precise yet aggressive self on the initial run in to Turn One.

“Jenson was unlucky to miss out on getting through to Q3 by just 17 thousandths of a second. With hindsight I think perhaps we didn’t engineer him sufficient opportunity to get to grips with the Option tyre. Even so, he, too, will start on the clean side of the track and will also be attacking tomorrow’s race with a mind to bag as many world championship points as he possibly can.”

Mercedes GP

A strong performance from Nico Rosberg today saw him qualify in sixth place for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. Team-mate Michael Schumacher had a more difficult session and qualified in 14th position.

Nico was competing towards the front throughout the three qualifying sessions and his final lap in Q3 was good enough to line up on the third row of the grid. Michael struggled more with the set-up of his car and did not progress beyond Q2.

Nico Rosberg: “I’m pleased to be starting from sixth place as we didn’t think we would be that far forward today, so it’s an unexpected and pleasant surprise. We are a long way from the front which is a concern but we took everything that we could from today and I am happy with our performance. We did a very good job with the set-up which meant we could get the best out of the car. Hopefully I can have a good start and our aim as always is to make up a few more places and get some decent points again.”

Michael Schumacher: “Obviously qualifying was not ideal for us today. After yesterday’s performance, we purposely went for a different set-up which was supposed to tell us more about the car and was targeted more towards the race. It seemed to be reasonable this morning but as the track became hotter in qualifying, it went against us. Our set-up should work better in the race although starting from 14th place does not make it easy. Being on the dirty side of the starting grid does not specifically help, but I will certainly try again to have a good start tomorrow. And from then on we will have to see how the race develops.”

Ross Brawn: “We’ve had a challenging weekend with the cars here so far. We did make some progress this morning prior to qualifying and clearly we got the car to suit Nico and he did an excellent job this afternoon. However we didn’t find the right solutions for Michael which was not helped by some vibration problems on his last set of tyres in Q2. I must compliment Nico on a great job and achieving a strong starting position which is as good as we could have hoped given the performance of the car.”

Norbert Haug: “Nico and our team did the maximum they could and achieved the best possible result for us today. Sixth place on the dirty side of the track with less grip is not the ideal place for a good start, but our result could have been worse after we faced some problems in finding the right set-up direction for the cars yesterday. Well done to the team for the recovery. Michael tried a different set-up solution which did not work out in the end. A week at Hockenheim, he was eight-thousands of a second slower than Nico and here the margin is much bigger so we just did not get it right.”

Renault

Vitaly Petrov: I think we did a good job today and I’m very happy to reach Q3 and to be starting seventh ahead of Robert because you first goal is always to be ahead of your teammate. We knew that the car would be quite good here and I have been very happy with the balance during the whole weekend. But the guys in front are still very strong so we know that we need to keep pushing to catch them. For the race tomorrow, overtaking will be very difficult, and the only real chance is at the start, but I will do my best to try and pass some guys and score some points.

Robert Kubica: We were hoping to be closer to the front today. It was looking better this morning during practice, but in Q3 I just didn’t have enough grip and had a lot of bottoming with the car, which was quite strange. My lap in Q3 was very slow – half a second slower than my Q2 run, but I just didn’t have the grip. For the race, everything will be about the first lap and the start of the race, so we hope to get a good start and
make up some positions tomorrow.

Eric Boullier, Team Principal: Today’s qualifying result confirms the strong pace that we have seen from both cars since the beginning of the weekend and especially during practice this morning. It’s good to see Vitaly in P7 and both cars are well placed to score points tomorrow.
However, we struggled a bit with the option tyres in Q3 and we probably didn’t extract the maximum performance from them, so we could have been even higher up the grid.
But, as I say, it’s still a good result and we know that we can be quick in the race. It will be important to be opportunistic and our target will be to get ahead of Rosberg and see if we can catch Hamilton.

Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer: To get both cars into Q3 for the third time this year is a good result for the team after a weekend where the car has been very competitive. Vitaly did an excellent job to qualify
seventh, but I still feel that we could have got more pace from both cars in Q3 where we struggled more than we expected. Robert in particular was lacking grip and couldn’t repeat his lap time from Q2. Still, we saw on Friday that our race pace on high fuel was very competitive so I’m confident that we can race strongly tomorrow and hopefully have both
cars finish in the points.

Sauber Ferrari

For the fifth time this season the team managed to get one car into the top ten qualifying. Pedro de la Rosa qualified ninth for tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. The Spaniard made it into Q3 for the second time. For his team-mate, Kamui Kobayashi, almost everything went wrong in qualifying – tyre strategy, traffic and, on top of that, he didn’t see a red light in the pit lane, so missed going into the FIA garage to be weighed. He will drop five grid positions.

Pedro de la Rosa: “I am happy with my performance but, more importantly, I am very proud of the team. The car was really good. My position proves how much progress the guys from Hinwil have made with
the car, especially to make it quicker in slow corners. They just kept their heads down and worked hard, and they have turned it around. Tomorrow I will try and stay out of trouble at the start and during the first lap, and then I will certainly fight for points.”

Kamui Kobayashi: “I am very disappointed. We have done a lot of set-up changes since we arrived here, but still I am not happy. To me the car feels strange, different from what I’m used to, and I don’t have any
grip. So the situation was quite difficult for me anyway, and then the team was over-optimistic sending me out on the harder tyres for my second run in Q1. I believe on the softer compound I would have managed to get at least to Q2. However, mistakes happen. I obviously went past a
red light in the pit lane and missed going to the FIA scales. I just didn’t see it.“

Peter Sauber, Team Principal: “Being ninth was a good performance by Pedro. Congratulation also to the team as it was able to find a very good set-up on a track which we didn’t expect to suit our car. Kamui was blocked twice on his quick laps, which was very unfortunate for him.”

James Key, Technical Director: “At the end it was a mixed day for us. This morning neither driver was able to put their lap times together due to traffic. Looking at the various sector times we were quite confident in the car’s performance, as well as the drivers’. They both reported the car felt better than yesterday. Going into qualifying we did a longer run with the harder tyres on both cars, which looked okay. But on the second run, also on the prime tyres in order to save a set of option tyres, unfortunately Kamui caught some traffic on two of his laps in the final run, which spoilt the laps for him. Nevertheless, had we gone with the softer tyres, I believe he would still have gone through. That was our mistake, and we apologize to Kamui for that. Pedro put in a very good performance that got us through to Q3. It was very close in the end. Ninth is okay, and it is just a few tenths away from the times in front.”