There were top ten grid slots in Valencia qualifying for Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil while their team-mates just missed out...
Renault:
Nick Heidfeld: "In third practice we tried a few small set-up changes, and it went according to plan with no major incidents. When I reached Qualifying, my Q1 did not go as well as I would have liked because I'd planned to do just one lap in order to save the tyres. Unfortunately, I experienced a bit of traffic during my flying lap, which slowed me down somewhat and so I had to carry on and do more laps than I wanted to try and bring the time down. Q2 was ok, but we knew we needed to improve to get through, so we did another lap on new options which was successful as I managed to squeeze into the top 10 by finishing ninth fastest. Then, when I went out in Q3, we saw that Sutil was not going to do a lap time so we quite rightly came back in because the cars ahead had posted times that were considerably quicker. Of course, when you're in the car and you are called back, you want to stay out and have a go! But, it was the right decision because we've saved tyres. We were targeting higher than P9 and P11 but realistically, on today's pace, that's where we were so we will now look forward to a strong race tomorrow."
Vitaly Petrov: "The gap between me and P10 was very close, but that's racing - sometimes other cars are faster than you and tomorrow is another day. We didn't have any particular problems, just not quite enough speed so we will try our hardest in the race tomorrow. It's a long race and it won't be an easy one in this heat. We will analyse the data and hope we perform better on fresh tyres. I'm sure there will be a lot of overtaking and much will depend on who can look after the rear tyres the best. Here, the degradation is not as bad as we have seen and we will not see a race like Barcelona so I'm confident we can take a good stride forwards and get a good result."
Force India:
Adrian Sutil: "The car has been working pretty well all weekend and I felt that we had a good chance to make it through to Q3 today. But I knew that we would have to get the lap just right. That's why this result feels great because I got the maximum from the car. We didn't go out in Q3 because we felt it was better to save another set of soft tyres for the race. Also, we saw in Q2 that Heidfeld was three tenths away and that it would be difficult to improve on P10. So it's a good grid position, but the race is what counts so hopefully we can convert this into points tomorrow."
Paul di Resta: "After the problems we had in free practice, I knew that I would be on the back foot today having only completed three timed laps yesterday. But we tried our best this morning to get up to speed with the car before qualifying. On my final flying lap in Q2 I was on the edge and simply made a small mistake at turn 17 - I missed a downshift and ran wide. That meant I lost the advantage I'd made at the start of the lap. So I will start from P12, which is not too bad considering all that has happened this weekend. I'm staying positive and think that we can fight for points from there. The only unknowns are that I haven't done a long run on high fuel and it's difficult to know where to start with the aero balance or when to conserve the tyres. So we will try and make the most of what we know."
Williams:
Rubens Barrichello: "We should have made it into Q3 today. My plan for the race is to do the best I can and enjoy myself. We are only just outside the points and there are opportunities to overtake around this track so we will see what we can do."
Pastor Maldonado: "We obviously had a problem with the car but we don't know what it is; the engineers are looking into it. It's quite strange because we haven't had any other issues over the weekend. The car feels strong at the moment so I think we could have made it into Q3 today if it weren't for that."
Sauber:
Kamui Kobayashi: "It is quite tricky. Generally our car improved and, again, I am very confident for the race. We have shown we are much better in race conditions. Again I had warm-up issues with the tyres, and once I find some grip the front tyres overheat. For the future we will try to find a solution for this, but for tomorrow I will be aiming for points as in the previous races."
Sergio Perez: "Because the track temperatures were going up I expected to be a few tenths quicker, but it turned out not to be that easy. We did more laps in order to get the tyres to work, but this also has disadvantages. However, I think tomorrow it will be possible to get some points and this is my target."
