Nico Rosberg and Kamui Kobayashi made the top ten in Malaysia while Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Buemi narrowly missed out...
Mercedes GP:
Nico Rosberg: "The team have made some good progress here and I had a decent balance up to Q2 today. Unfortunately I lost that feeling in Q3, which combined with the rear wing issue, meant we weren't able to get the performance out of the car which is frustrating. The car is better than we have been able to show so far this season but we don't know exactly why we are not getting more performance at the moment. We need to look into today's issues now and have a good think to see what can help us improve in the race tomorrow."
Michael Schumacher: "We had some issues with the rear wing activation today and unfortunately that's what compromised my last run in Q2. The car became difficult to drive, which is a real shame as it had been working very well during the earlier runs. The performance was much better with the wing, so of course we had to use it, and I would still say that we have made a step forward thanks to the hard work from our guys. We now have to concentrate on tomorrow's race which we go into with the firm belief that anything can be possible."
Sauber:
Kamui Kobayashi: "I'm quite happy with today's qualifying. Of course I was hoping to improve a bit on my very last run, especially as, unlike in Melbourne, I had a set of new soft tyres left. But I think there wasn't more to get out of the car today. Nevertheless the team had done a very good job improving it after some problems yesterday. We found some things overnight, in free practice this morning we still struggled a bit, but then we knew what to do. It was here in Sepang last year where I reached Q3 for the first time in my F1 career. The race will be very interesting, especially in terms of tyre degradation in the heat. I am certainly aiming for points."
Sergio Perez: "I am a bit disappointed because we had the potential for Q3 if I had got my final lap right. On my second run in Q2 I was caught in traffic on my out lap. On the flying lap sectors one and two were fine, but in sector three I had no front grip and the car was understeering a lot. Now I hope we have a good race strategy as I'm still aiming for points which, of course, is not easy from where I am starting. It will be a demanding race, but I'm looking forward to the challenge."
Toro Rosso:
Sebastien Buemi: "I am very happy with how qualifying went today, as it is the second time in two races that I have produced a good performance, improving lap after lap. Unfortunately, I had a problem in Q1, when the left sidepod came off, but the mechanics worked well to fit a new one very quickly. I am satisfied, because in twelfth, we are not far off the Mercedes and quite close to Q3 and so we must continue to work hard to improve. At least it seems we are on the right road. We changed the car a lot between free practice 3 and qualifying and it was the right thing to do, especially as these settings should also work well in the race. I think it will almost certainly rain at some point tomorrow, so finishing the race will be the first challenge."
Jaime Alguersuari: "Finishing P12 and 13 is a good result for the team and I feel we have the potential to do a good race tomorrow. We got pretty much the maximum out of the set-up. Sebastien was again faster than me by a small amount, doing a good job. I feel we have a good set-up, whether it rains or not and I don't personally mind if it is wet or dry in the race. The key will be to keep the rear tyres alive and make them last as long as possible and I hope we can bring home some more points for the team."
Force India:
Paul di Resta: "It was a very good job done by the team and equally, I think it was a very good lap by myself! We got more than I think we thought we were going to get out of it and I think that we have certainly closed the gap. But tomorrow is going to be a long race, in tricky weather conditions, but I am certainly getting more excited now about our progress with regard to improving our performance in the future."
Adrian Sutil: "The first qualifying session was not too bad I think and I felt quite positive. But we did not improve too much in the second session, which I was a little surprised about and we had a problem with a mis-shift. But I know the team is working hard to try and solve these issues before the race tomorrow."
