For the fifth time this season a Sauber F1 Team driver has made it into the top ten qualifying. Sergio Pérez qualified tenth for tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Kamui Kobayashi came 13th in Budapest. Both are in strong positions to fight for points in what will be an exciting race at the winding Hungaroring.

Red Bull Racing

Christian Horner

“A really close qualifying and a phenomenal effort by Sebastian to get the pole position on the last run, especially after a hard night by all the mechanics. We used the first of our jokers with the curfew, of which we are permitted four in a season, to spend the extra time working on car set-up. He’s repaid them in the best possible way with pole position, which is a great start to the weekend but we’re set for a tough race tomorrow. Unfortunately Mark picked up a KERS issue in Q2; it came available again in Q3, but it hampered his preparation. Nonetheless we know Mark’s a great racer and I’m sure he’ll make good progress from there in tomorrow’s race.”

Cyril Dumont, Renault

“Another pole position, which is great. I would like to say a big thank you to all the boys working in the garage last night as they worked very hard and didn’t get much sleep. I think today showed it was worth it. Regarding Mark, I think he should have been higher, but he had a KERS issue. No one doubts that he will be back up there tomorrow.”

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

“When your drivers qualify second and third, inevitably you’re a little disappointed that you didn’t bag pole position and such is the case today; however, the positive corollary of that statement is that pole position was indubitably within our grasp this afternoon. Lewis ran a little wide in the final turn on his last attempt to take pole position, but his was a good lap all the same and he’ll start from the front row tomorrow. Jenson qualified well too, ending up just behind Lewis in P3 – which will put him on the clean side of the grid. The team has done a professional and disciplined job both yesterday and today, and we’re confident of being able to mount a serious challenge for victory tomorrow. Our long runs were good yesterday, our starts have been strong in recent races, and Lewis came through today’s qualifying having conserved an extra set of new Option tyres which should give him a small advantage in the race. It’ll only be a small advantage, mind; but, so close is the competition in Formula 1 these days, that a small advantage is sometimes all you need…”

Scuderia Ferrari

Stefano Domenicali

“When you see one of your cars at the top of the time sheet in Q1 and again in Q2, clearly you start to believe you might finally be about to take pole, but we knew it would be very, very difficult to achieve: Hamilton has been very strong all weekend and Red Bull always has something in reserve for Q3. We did not manage to put together the perfect lap with either driver and the logical outcome of all that is that we have ended up with the same result as in Germany one week ago. We always have a bit more pace in the race compared to qualifying, but here too, overtaking will be very complicated. Historically, the start has been a very important moment at this track, as is the behaviour of the tyres. It will be a very unpredictable race, as indeed has been the case at almost all of them this year: whoever does the best job of working as a team will have the upper hand.”

Pat Fry

“You could say this was a predictable result. We did not get all the potential out of the car, but it would not have changed much in terms of our grid positions. It’s true that compared to the start of the season, we have caught up quite a bit, but it’s equally true that, especially in qualifying, we still lack something compared to our closest opponents. We need to work more to improve our performance on a first flying lap, there’s no doubt about that. From a technical point of view, we suffered particularly in the third sector: while being competitive in the first two, in the last one, we lost a few tenths too many. It was to be expected, also after what we saw last week in Germany in the first few corners of the Nurburgring track. However, tomorrow will be a very tight race, partly because I expect to see a lot of tyre changes. We will have to be careful when choosing the right moment for the pit stops, especially as overtaking on track will not be a walk in the park for anyone, even with DRS. We will try to do our best, aware of the strengths of our main rivals.”

Mercedes GP Petronas

Ross Brawn

“A reasonable qualifying session for us today with Nico and Michael getting the most out of the car that we had. Our positions are about where we are at the moment. During this morning’s practice session, we focused on our race performance, and that should pay off for us tomorrow afternoon. It’s likely to be quite a tricky race with the tyres as the super softs are right on the limit, so we will have to look after them carefully and make the most of them.”

Norbert Haug

“Nico and the team did a good job today in getting the maximum from our current technical package and putting the car in seventh position behind the three top teams. The fact that Mark was on pole one week ago and now is in sixth place demonstrates how tough the battle in this group is, and how challenging it is to break into the top six this season. Michael had a more difficult Q3 and struggled slightly with the set-up of his car. By using primes in Q1 and doing only one outing in Q2 and Q3, Nico saved one set of fresh options for the race which will be very helpful tomorrow. It will be a challenging race for us and our aim is to come home where we are starting or slightly better.”

Force India F1 Team

Dr. Vijay Mallya, Chairman & Team Principal

“Once again we have come to a high downforce track and demonstrated that the VJM04 is a consistent top ten runner. This is now the fourth race in a row that a Force India has made it through to Q3 and the whole team can be proud of this achievement. Adrian was superb today and recovered well from a difficult final practice session to qualify eighth – splitting the Mercedes cars. Paul has also shown good speed throughout all the sessions and will be strong in the race. We go into tomorrow in a positive frame of mind and focussed on converting our performance today into more points.”

Sauber F1 Team

Peter Sauber, Team Principal

“It’s the first time in his Formula One career that Sergio can start from the top ten, which is always something special. Congratulation to him for a fantastic performance and also to his race engineer. I’m sure it was the right thing to do to save one set of new super soft tyres for the race. P13 is maybe a little bit less than what Kamui had hoped for, but he is in a very good position to attack tomorrow and fight for points.”

James Key, Technical Director

“I’m very pleased with Sergio’s performance in qualifying. We knew from this morning that it was likely to be extremely close, so it was great to get through to Q3. We decided not to do a flying lap in that session. Although possibly we could have made a bit of progress, I think tyre saving will be extremely important tomorrow. We took a strategic decision not to do a timed lap, although he left the pits we decided to bring him in. Unfortunately Kamui couldn’t make it to Q3, but it was only a matter of tenths. We will look at all possibilities and try to come up with a sensible race strategy and aim for a good points finish tomorrow.”

Lotus-Renault GP

Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer

“It was a difficult day for us. Both drivers reported that the car felt better in FP3 after we had made changes overnight following on from what we learnt on Friday’s practice runs. Although we had made improvements, we simply did not have the pace here today to challenge for the top ten which is not good enough. The soft tyre was between 1-1.5 seconds slower, so tyre strategy in qualifying was not difficult today. For the race, I expect it will be reasonably straightforward in terms of tyre choice, with probably a three pit stop race. Vitaly’s final run in Q2 was compromised; he was on his out lap and was slowed down by another car. This prevented him from warming his tyres, which is critical for a qualifying lap on the super soft tyres. We did have an issue with fuel delivery on Nick’s car this morning, so we changed the relevant parts in the fuel system and did not suffer a repeat of the issues in qualifying.”

AT&T Williams F1

Sam Michael, Technical Director

“Our plan today was to look at conserving tyres for the race so we only used the prime throughout Q1 on both cars. Rubens looked quite strong in the opening session so we actually ran one set of options on his car in Q2. Unfortunately a problem with KERS at the start of his quick lap compromised that decision and cost him some time so we really didn’t get the most out of using the new option, as can be seen from the small, four tenths difference between his prime and option time. In Pastor’s case, he chose not to run in Q2 to save the option tyre for tomorrow, which was the team’s plan.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Giorgio Ascanelli

“Jaime did a good job, even allowing for the fact that we gained one place as Maldonaldo did not go out in Q2. He looked quite close to those ahead of him in Q1, running first the Prime then the Option, but then the gap was re-established in Q2, when he made a single run on the Option. With Buemi, given his five place penalty, we opted to ignore grid position and concentrate on saving tyres for the race, which is what we have done. He only ran on the Prime tyre this afternoon which gives him three new sets of Option for the race. Normally, we say we look better in terms of our race pace than in qualifying and yesterday when we ran in both conditions in free practice that was the case. However, we did not get it quite right on low fuel, therefore it is hard to be sure what is the situation at this type of track. Overtaking is difficult here, so we will have to be creative with our strategy and try and make the tyres last.”

Team Lotus

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader

“We can all be pleased with the performance today. From the engine side we have been working on giving the drivers the right engine maps for this track, focusing on driveability which is key to maximising on this type of twisty track and I think both drivers extracted as much as they could from the complete package today. Our race pace looks pretty good for tomorrow as well so I think we are in a good position all round.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer

“That was a pretty good qualifying for the team. We only ran one set of options on both cars in Q1 to save them for the race which will put us in good a position for the race tomorrow with the degradation levels we are going to see. Both drivers did a good job today. Jarno has been much happier with the car all weekend but couldn’t quite translate that into his qualifying runs. He made a couple of small mistakes on his quickest lap which cost him a bit but it is good to see how well he has responded to the updates we have brought. Heikki has been less happy with the balance this weekend but he did an excellent job to get the most out of the car, so well done to him and the whole team.”

Riad Asmat, Chief Executive Officer

“Firstly I want to say how pleased we all are with jarno’s performance this weekend, in and out of the car. He has responded exactly as we would have hoped to the updates introduced here and has shown exactly why he is rightly considered one of the fastest drivers out there. On the qualifying session itself, I think we have to be reasonably pleased with how that went. Heikki put in a great final lap to edge just ahead of Jarno, and to finish less than three tenths from Buemi and about five tenths from Maldonado suggests that the changes we have made here have paid dividends. Both drivers have said they probably could not have found much more from the cars, but after very solid performances in all three practice sessions, and with good pace in the long runs yesterday, I think we are in good shape for tomorrow’s race.”

Marussia Virgin Racing

John Booth, Team Principal

“Both cars started taking a set-up direction that had seemed positive in FP2. This morning, while Jérôme was happy with his balance, Timo was less so, and this may partly be due to the strong wind conditions seen today. Going into qualifying, Jérôme kept his FP3 set-up , while Timo made some significant changes to improve his balance from FP3. Both cars got clean laps and Timo was happier with the car in qualifying. We opted to save a set of new Option tyres for the race tomorrow and we hope this decision will ensure both cars have a strong race.”

HRT F1 Team

Colin Kolles, Team Principal

“We sent our cars out right away with super-soft tyres and Ricciardo got the ball rolling with 1.27.206 and Liuzzi 1.27.850 in very windy conditions. We had a good fight for the positions and it is very close. It will be a very difficult race tomorrow if these windy conditions persist. We’re well prepared for tomorrow as we have learned from yesterday and improved our set-up. We are trying to make good progress at every race and build on last week’s results. There is no reason why we can’t take another step forward this weekend. We need to maintain qualifying form and reliability and look for a two car finish again.”