It was a Qualifying session of mixed fortunes for Lotus Renault GP, with Nick finishing in P9 whilst Vitaly just missed out on a place in Q3, finishing in eleventh.

In considerably hotter conditions than were experienced during yesterday’s free practice sessions, Nick managed to secure his place in Q3 despite not posting a time in the final session. Assuring himself of a place in the top 10 after posting best times of 1.39.877 in Q1 and 1.38.781 in Q2, he did not run in the final session on hearing that Adrian Sutil would not be competing.

Sebastian Vettel secured yet another pole position with a time of 1.36.975s, almost two tenths quicker than his Australian team mate Mark Webber.

Red Bull Racing

Christian Horner

“A tremendous team performance and to have both drivers up on the front row is a great team result. It’s thanks to excellent execution in all three qualifying sessions and to the hard work that’s going on – not only trackside, but also back in the factory – to ensure that we can continue to produce cars that are capable of challenging for the pole, week in and week out. There are no points for today however and with the double DRS zone that we know will be very powerful here, it will make for a fascinating race tomorrow.”

Cyril Dumont, Renault

“So again, another very good qualifying for Red Bull Renault. It was our third one-two of the season and eighth pole position. It was a good recovery from Mark today after the Q1 session, which was not so easy for him. Regarding the new regulation, it’s a good result – I think the pace is there, even with the race set up! I hope we have a good race tomorrow.”

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal

“In the last three Grands Prix – Barcelona, Monte-Carlo and Montreal – we’ve had the quickest race car, and I’m hopeful that we’ll have the quickest race car here in Valencia, too. Today, we qualified third and sixth – good but not great – but we feel we can still win tomorrow’s race. Getting the strategy right will be a challenge for everyone, but we’ve got a great race car in the MP4-26 and two great race drivers in Lewis and Jenson – and, although ideally we’d prefer to have qualified on the front row, as I say I firmly believe we’ll be able to mount a serious challenge for victory tomorrow.”

Scuderia Ferrari

Stefano Domenicali

“All in all, this was a good qualifying. We fought McLaren right to the end for a place in the top three and we only missed out on it by a whisker. Sure, if we look back at the times, sector by sector, we can claim to have had the potential to get both our cars onto the second row, but we know how difficult it is to put together the perfect lap on a track like this. At the past four races, we have always qualified with at least one driver on the front two rows, which is progress compared to the first half of the season. Also, the gap to the quickest has come down, but even allowing for the fact that the circuit characteristics might have been favourable to us, it does mean that we working in the right direction in terms of the development of the car, although we need to give it an added boost. Tomorrow’s race looks like being very uncertain: there is a clear favourite of course, but I don’t think we should assume the result is a foregone conclusion. We have often seen races turn out to be more closely contested than qualifying and there is no reason why that should not be the case again tomorrow. The podium? I think we can fight for that. It will be important to do a good job of managing whatever situations arise during the race.”

Pat Fry

“A very interesting and closely contested qualifying. The gap to the quickest is more or less what we could have expected going into this weekend, given that this track has slightly different characteristics to Montreal, where we were closer to the front. In the final sector in particular, we paid the price when compared to the Red Bulls and also to the McLarens. It’s in that part of the track that aerodynamic efficiency of the car counts for the most and that is the area where we have to improve. Now we must concentrate on the race, well aware that it’s going to be tough and incident packed, as is usually the case on a street circuit. There is one more unknown factor than usual, linked to how the medium compound that we are running here for the first time will work out over a long run. I honestly believe that no one has yet got sufficient data to say how this factor will work out in tomorrow’s race.”

Mercedes GP Petronas

Ross Brawn

“Qualifying went pretty much to plan today. All of the drivers in Q3 managed reasonable laps, so we fell into the natural order, with Nico and Michael in seventh and eighth positions. The team has done a good job all weekend to maintain our position and get everything out of the current package. We are in good shape for the race, particularly Nico with a fresh set of option tyres available, and our high-fuel running has not been too bad. We must be aware of potentially even higher track temperatures tomorrow, but today we achieved the maximum that’s possible for us at the moment. However, our plan and ambition remains to move forward out of that position over the next months.”

Norbert Haug

“Nico and Michael achieved today what was achievable with our current technical package, which we will improve step-by-step over the season. Both drivers did only one run in Q3 with a new set of options. Nico’s and Michael’s lap times are split by 0.009 seconds, so a good effort on the limit of the car from both drivers.”

Force India F1 Team

Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman & Team Principal

“Today’s qualifying performance confirms the progress we have made recently with the development of the VJM04. To see Adrian qualify in the top ten, ahead of one of the Renaults, is a tremendous effort and probably the most that we could have expected today. The car has been competitive right from the start of practice and it is satisfying to see that pace translated into a strong starting position. Paul has also done an excellent job after losing nearly all his track time yesterday. To qualify in P12 shows how well the entire team has worked to recover from a difficult situation. For tomorrow, we will fight hard and hopefully bring home some points.”

AT&T Williams F1

Sam Michael

“We carried out further aero tests on the exhaust and front wing during this morning’s practice session. After reviewing the data we decided to revert to the standard exhaust system for qualifying as we were getting inconsistent floor performance from the latest version. In qualifying, Rubens’ quick lap on new tyres was looking good for a place in the top ten but he had a lock up in the last corner. We then had an issue with Pastor’s car which caused him to stop on the circuit. We’re still investigating the reason behind that. We’ll be pushing for points tomorrow.”

Sauber F1 Team

Peter Sauber, team principal

“I’m happy we have Sergio back in the car. However, we have a difficult task in front of us for the race.”

James Key, technical director

“It was a disappointing session today. We made up a bit of ground over night, and the drivers were generally happy with the car this morning, but we knew we needed to make another step in qualifying. Q1 looked okay, Sergio’s lap was pretty competitive, and we wanted to improve in Q2. But ultimately this didn’t happen. We were unable to extract the most out of the car. It’s a real shame, it’s not where we want to be, and now we have to focus on our race strategy to try and recover from a difficult qualifying.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Giorgio Ascanelli

“We did not get it right this afternoon. Seb did not improve on his run in Q2. We chose an aggressive strategy in terms of the tyres, going for a single run in each session, because we expect it will be even hotter tomorrow and we wanted to use just the two sets of tyres per driver. Seb had a completely traffic-free lap at the end of Q2 and he did not make the most of it. In Jaime’s case, the whole weekend has been a struggle, for reasons not of his making: yesterday we had a problem we could not solve in time to get him out for FP2 and today, I would say we let him out on track 30 seconds too late. He then found traffic on his first lap and that was it. If you look at the gap to our usual competitors, apart from Sutil who did a good job, I think we are pretty much on their pace with a much smaller gap to the others than we had here last year. The new components we brought here look promising, even if we did not get the best out of them. I think we need more track time to get the most out of these updates. We cannot be happy with our qualifying positions, but I would not say it is a drama.”

Team Lotus

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 support leader

“During FP3 we completed a good programme with Heikki. We had a small electrical issue with Jarno but that was quickly fixed and from our perspective that was a good session. One of the goals was to give the drivers the right engine maps to maximise performance in the slow speed corners and with the mileage we completed we were able to achieve that. In qualifying the result was not quite what we had hoped for but we definitely know where we have to improve the car and I am confident we are going in the right direction.”

Tony Fernandes, team principal

“I watched that session from Paris where I have had a very good week working on deals for AirAsia and Team Lotus. Ten years ago we started an airline with just $250,000 and two planes. Two days ago we completed the largest ever contract with Airbus worth $18 billion and won the title of World’s Best Low-Cost Airline for the third consecutive year. After such a momentous week I then had the pleasure of watching Heikki put in yet another very strong drive, and had Jarno not spun on his final lap he would have been right up there with his teammate. With performances like that, and the hard work the whole team puts in every single day, I can’t help but feel that AirAsia’s history will eventually repeat itself with Team Lotus. I do love our little team.”

Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer

“A reasonably good qualifying session for us. We are a little further down than we expected to be here, but we are well clear of the cars behind. Tomorrow will be a long hard race and the goal for us is to have a reliable two car finish and see what we can pick up.”

Marussia Virgin Racing

John Booth, team principal

“As we’ve seen on a number of occasions this year, it’s a case of mixed results. Timo continued his good start to the weekend and stepped through some set-up changes in FP3 which seem to have improved the car again, so going into qualifying he was happy with the balance of the car. Unfortunately we made a little mistake with the timing of his second run which undoubtedly lost him some time as he was unable to set his time on the optimum lap for the tyres. With this in mind we are looking forward to the race tomorrow where I’m sure further improvements will be seen. Jerome was also running well and again experimenting with set-up in P3, although we chose to make a reasonably big change on his car going into qualifying, as it had shown good results on Timo’s car. This is always a risk with the driver not having used the set-up before, however Jérôme was initially running quite well. Unfortunately on his second run, whilst braking for turn 17, he felt a problem with the car. From the data and an initial inspection of the car, this was found to be a problem with the rear spring. We will inspect under Parc Ferme and rectify the issue for tomorrow, after which I’m sure Jérôme can look forward to an equally good race.”

HRT F1 Team

Colin Kolles, HRT team principal

“Qualifying could have been better. We lost too much time, especially in the second sector and also in the third sector. I don’t think that we achieved the optimum therefore it’s quite disappointing, now we have to see what was the reason for us losing so much time in the second and third sector. I hope that the engineers will find a solution for the upcoming races and that we have a good setup for the race tomorrow. Under normal circumstances there won’t be any change in the weather conditions tomorrow so I think it will be quite an interesting race but not as interesting as Canada, the main target is obviously to finish the race with both cars, let’s see what happens.”