A tough evening for Brawn GP at the Marina Bay Street Circuit saw Rubens Barrichello qualify in fifth position for tomorrow’s Singapore Grand Prix with team-mate Jenson Button qualifying in twelfth position.

In Q3, Rubens was lying in fifth position on his final flying lap when he ran wide on the dust at turn five and hit the wall bringing qualifying to an early conclusion. Rubens will start in tenth position on the grid due to a five-place gearbox change penalty.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal

“Although today’s qualifying ended slightly anticlimactically, owing to an accident that befell Rubens (Barrichello) and triggered a red flag that prevented the session from running its full allocated hour, Lewis thoroughly deserved his pole position. Other drivers were also pushing hard at the end, and undoubtedly it would therefore have been close, but we feel relatively confident that Lewis would have remained unbeaten. By contrast, on the harder tyre, Heikki hadn’t managed to cut a really quick lap in Q3 by the time the session was red-flagged – but we believe that, with the benefit of another lap, he would have been able to go significantly faster. As a result, although he’s understandably disappointed that he’ll be starting the race from P10, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t put in a competitive showing tomorrow. Overall, then, we’re hoping to score plenty of points – but, since Lewis will be starting from pole, I grant you that that isn’t a particularly bold statement. I make no apology for that: the weather will be hot and humid, and we may even see rain; the walls are close and unforgiving; the circuit is a challenging one. But we think we’re pretty well set.”

Norbert Haug, vice-president Mercedes-Benz Motorsport

“Congratulations to Lewis for a fantastic job and his third pole position in the last four Grands Prix since Valencia at the end of August.Also, a big, big thank you to everyone in the team who worked through the night until 10 this morning to build up a different chassis for Lewis as a precaution after a problem related to a cable of our KERS Hybrid. Sorry for Heikki, who was strong all weekend until the last session when his first run did not work out in the expected way. After Rubens’ crash there was no time for a second run left, so Heikki has to start from 10th position. Strategy-wise we should be in a good position and hopefully we can fight for a win tomorrow.”

Red Bull Racing

Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal

“An exciting qualifying session. It was disappointing that it got red flagged just before the end, as both our guys were on really strong laps and we felt we could lock out the front row today. But, both drivers drove very well throughout all the sessions and second and fourth are good starting places for tomorrow’s race, which will be long and tough. The spectacle of seeing the cars driving under the lights again here is fantastic.”

Fabrice Lom, Renault, principal engineer track support

“A mixed feeling again today. It’s a very good qualifying result, we didn’t expect to be as quick as we are, so second and fourth is very good, but I think we were quicker than our final times show. We didn’t demonstrate exactly what we can do, due to the red flag interrupting the final runs, but let’s see tomorrow. I think we can have a strong race and close the gap to the Brawns here.”

AT&T Williams F1

Patrick Head, Williams’ director of engineering

“It was a fantastic qualifying performance from Nico tonight with his true pace only shown in Q2 because of the red flag in Q3. So I’m really happy for him and expect him to race well tomorrow. Kazuki just missed the cut for Q3, but can race for points tomorrow with a good fuel strategy. We could see from yesterday’s practice that the FW31 upgrades were working well, so development is going in the right direction and well done to everybody in the team that has contributed to this progress.”

Brawn GP F1 Team

Ross Brawn, team Pricipal

“It was a difficult qualifying session for the team in Singapore this evening. Prior to qualifying, we took the decision to change the gearbox in Rubens’ car as this is a heavy duty cycle track for gearboxes and further dyno simulations had shown that keeping the box was too risky. Both drivers progressed comfortably through Q1 then we struggled in Q2 and were not able to get the cars balanced. Rubens put in a good lap at the end to progress with Jenson suffering from understeer throughout the day. We made some significant changes to his car prior to qualifying but were not able to get into the top ten. We expected to be more competitive in Q3 but with Rubens’ accident, it’s clearly not been a great day. We have to tough it out and see what we can recover tomorrow.”

ING Renault F1 Team

Bob Bell, Renault team principal

“Unfortunately Romain did not have a great qualifying session as he had brake problems which hampered his progress. In Q2, Fernando picked up pace – maybe because the track temperature was falling slightly or perhaps because the circuit was picking up grip. Whatever the reason, the balance of the car certainly improved and Fernando was able to gain time and had more confidence in the car. He did a very good job in Q3 although it’s fair to say we benefited from Barrichello’s incident, but I think it was a good solid performance considering our expectations prior to qualifying.”

Panasonic Toyota Racing

Pascal Vasselon, Toyota senior general manager chassis

“As expected we are stronger here in Singapore than we were at the last race so it is disappointing not to get both cars into the top 10. Timo did a good job to get through first and second qualifying. In the end we are a bit frustrated that the final session ended early due to the red flag because he didn’t have the chance to use his final set of new options so there was an opportunity to qualify even higher. The target for Timo is clearly a strong points finish but the race will be harder for Jarno. We need to analyse the grip problems he had and we will see what we can do with our strategy to recover some positions.”

BMW Sauber F1 Team

Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport director

“Qualifying brought some surprises. In Q1 with 20 cars on the track it was difficult to find a lap without traffic. Both our drivers were only able to get the right time to advance in Q2 on their second try. Also the way from Q2 into Q3 was anything but easy. Positions five to ten were only fractions of a second away from each other. In Q3 we saved our last set of soft tyres for the final run, but this was stopped by Rubens Barrichello’s accident. We were one of three teams today that made it with both cars into the top ten. For us it was only the second time this season we managed this. This confirms the positive trend and the work we all put into the new development package.”

Willy Rampf, BMW Sauber head of engineering

“Our comprehensive development package made us move a step forward. For the second time this year both our cars made it into the final qualifying session. Anyhow we are not satisfied with our qualifying positions, even though both Nick and Robert will move up the grid one place because a driver finishing in front will be penalized. Both drivers had to cancel their crucial final run in Q3 on the softer tyre compound due to Rubens Barrichello’s accident. Therefore both of them qualified in the final session only on the harder compound.”

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro

Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari team principal

“Our target today was to get at least one car through to Q3 and the other to Q2, but we did not succeed and we have to accept that our package just wasn’t quick enough in this qualifying session. Furthermore, if so many of our competitors continue to develop their cars, while we stopped doing so with ours several weeks ago, then the more time goes by, the more we will find ourselves in an ever more difficult situation. However, what really matters is the race result, where reliability is always the key factor, especially in a race that looks like being very tough and where all sorts of things could happen. Clearly, we will be trying to fight our way towards the front, which means it will be difficult to reach our minimum target of finishing in the top eight.”

Chris Dyer, Ferrari chief engineer

“A really difficult qualifying for us, even more so than we expected. We knew it would be tough, but we felt we could have made it through to the final part of the session. But honestly, today we did not have the performance to do that. Kimi did two good laps in Q2, but it was not enough. Tomorrow’s race will be very long, so let’s hope we can make up some places at the start and then try and get into the points.”

Scuderia toro Rosso

Laurent Mekies, Toro Rosso chief engineer

“We had a very difficult Friday and made a major change to the car set-up overnight, which seems to have been a step in the right direction. Sebastien and Jaime also improved their performance. Jaime has got better throughout the weekend on a track that is difficult to learn and Sebastien is back in Q2 after a gap of a few races. We’re still not where we want to be, but having made a good step forward from Friday to today, there is still room to make another one for the race, which is likely to be very chaotic, so anything can happen.”

Force India Formula One Team

Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India chairman and team principal

“After the outstanding performance in Spa and Monza we were expecting more of a challenge this weekend for sure. We feel we have a car that is now amongst the quickest in the field but unfortunately in high downforce trim we are not seeing a reflection of this performance as teams that were behind us in Spa and Monza are ahead of us here. There are however only two extraordinarily high downforce tracks on the calendar – here and Monaco – so we cannot trade this improvement in performance for just one race. We are still looking forward to the Grand Prix, which is sure to be eventful, long and challenging and will try our best to continue our current run of points’ scoring finishes. We are however anticipating a better performance at the more traditional tracks of Suzuka and Interlagos, which will be sure to suit us a lot better.”