Williams had yet another disappointing Saturday, qualifying at the back of the pack with Lotus, Virgin and HRT...
Williams:
Pastor Maldonado: "I didn't get much running on low fuel this morning, just four timed laps, and this track is not easy, especially sectors 2 and 3. I think I did some good laps in qualifying, in both Q1 and Q2. We are a bit far away from the top ten so we need to keep working. Tomorrow is another day and we have lots of new tyres which is important for our race strategy."
Rubens Barrichello: "My first lap in Q1 was quite good but my tyres had started to go off by the third lap. As we had decided to conserve tyres before the session started, we aborted the run and came in. We made the best call we could today based on the performance we have in the car at the moment."
Team Lotus:
Heikki Kovalainen: "For me that was probably my best qualifying lap of the season. Next to Hungary, I think I got as much as I possibly could out of the car and nailed every sector, so it's a good feeling to know when you've wrung as much as you can from a single lap. We worked hard last night and today to find a balance that would suit the dry conditions today and tomorrow, and I think we've done that, so I'm feeling pretty good about the race. It'll be very interesting to see how the tyre strategies play out, and if we can keep up the pace from Suzuka we'll be there or thereabouts."
Jarno Trulli: "I think we did ok today, but there was definitely a bit more in the car. This morning I had a really good setup and found a lot of grip, but this afternoon it just didn't feel quite the same so I wasn't able to get as much out of the car as I could. Still, I'm reasonably happy with where we are - we're well ahead of the cars behind and close enough on race pace to a couple of the teams just ahead, so another good start tomorrow and we'll be ok."
Virgin:
Timo Glock: "It's been a great weekend so far and today went very smoothly compared to the last few weekends where we had a few more set-up troubles. The car was very good in wet conditions yesterday, which made me very comfortable for today, because if the car is very good in the wet it should also be good in the dry - and it was this morning, straight from the first lap. We just fine-tuned the set-up as for us there is quite a lot of grip here and that suits the car. I got a good qualifying lap; a slight mistake into turn 5 which cost me a bit of time, but in general today we are 0.9s from Team Lotus. The team did a good job and in particular my engineers worked well together to get everything right. Now we have to focus on looking after the tyres over a race distance and we'll see what we can do tomorrow."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "It wasn't a good day for me. The pace is not there and it's been like that all weekend. There's obviously something going wrong, even though we're not sure where it's coming from yet so we will have to analyse and try to understand it before tomorrow."
HRT:
Tonio Liuzzi: "Overall I was quite happy with the balance and the car was reacting quite well. We've had a good Saturday. In qualifying we were a few tenths behind one of the Virgins and a bit more off the other one, so we need to understand the reason behind this gap. We lost a lot in the third sector because of graining and this will be key tomorrow because the race will be really hard. There will be a lot of problems with the tyres, especially the supersofts, and we will face a lot of pit stops. We just have to be in the right place at the right time to try and beat our closest competitors."
Daniel Ricciardo: "This morning we had some problems which the guys tried to fix and we made it out on to the track before the end of the session. But in the afternoon, already on the first timed lap, my race engineer came on the radio and told me to box because they saw another issue coming up on the data. I'm sure it will be solved and we will try and have a good race tomorrow. Looking at today, as long as we get some miles done then that will be better than nothing."
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