Sat: Merc, Ferrari, RBR, Williams

Editor 23 Aug 2014 6:11 PM

Nico Rosberg claimed his seventh pole position of this season in Spa, beating Lewis Hamilton while Sebastian Vettel was third…

Mercedes:
Nico Rosberg: “It’s fantastic to start from pole here at Spa. It’s never easy here in these conditions, which make the track even more challenging. But today was very stable with intermediate conditions throughout, so not as tough as in previous years. It was a great qualifying performance today and I have to thank the team for their great work. My engineers helped me to find the right setup with all the opportunities to change something during a session. The car went better and better at the end, so I’m very happy and also a bit surprised that the gap was so big to the other teams. Having said that, I hope to have a good start and a clear race tomorrow because, like we have seen in Budapest, Sunday is the day that counts. But I’m quite confident as we have a fantastic car. I’m looking forward to the race.”

Lewis Hamilton: ” I was a bit nervous going into qualifying – wondering if everything would come together after the troubles I’ve had during recent weekends. But it’s great to see that all the hard work the team has put in is paying off. This circuit is a big challenge in the wet. It’s probably more fun in the dry, when you’re right on the edge of performance, but the conditions were pretty stable so it wasn’t too bad. This is a circuit where you need confidence on the brakes but unfortunately, on my Q3 run, I had a glazed front left brake which made the car pull to the side. When it does that, it’s really hard to recover and get the temperature into the brake, so it meant I kept losing a bit of braking power on my final laps. I’m not too disappointed, though. Last year I was on pole, then Seb came flying past me down the Kemmel Straight, so I think P2 could be the best place to be. It may just be a blessing in disguise with the grid slot.”

Red Bull:
Sebastian Vettel: “Yesterday was a different story to today. Today we did a lot more laps and I think the rain helped us, in dry conditions we couldn’t have qualified so high up. So, it was a good day for us and a good result and we should be a little bit more competitive compared to Mercedes in the race tomorrow, so let’s see.”

Daniel Ricciardo: “I had a moment on Blanchimont; that corner is tricky in the wet. It’s never full, it’s always a lift or a dab of the brakes and knowing that the chequered flag was just there at the end of the session, then I just pushed it a bit too much. I guess in hindsight it cost a bit of time, but you never get the perfect lap in these conditions. Spa is unique, as the track is so long and some parts of the circuits are drier than others, so nearly every lap you’re driving blind. It’s great to drive here though.”

Ferrari:
Fernando Alonso: “I think today’s qualifying went well, even if it wasn’t easy, because every time you went out on track, you didn’t know what conditions to expect and exactly how much grip you would find from the track surface. Fourth position is a great result and now I think we can expect a very interesting race. We tried various aerodynamic configurations and, if we seemed more competitive, maybe it’s because we managed to adapt better than some other teams. The rain certainly helped, but we also had good pace on the long run in the dry yesterday. Tomorrow, whatever the conditions, we must simply try to run a perfect race and above all make the right tyre choices. We have all new sets available and, of the two compounds, I think the Soft will be the one to use at the start and in the early part of the race. The Medium is a bit slower, but similar to the Soft in terms of degradation, so it will be a case of running it for as little time as possible in the race and to make the change at the right moment.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “After lots of unforeseen incidents on Friday, this morning I was reasonably happy with the handling of my car. In the afternoon, the arrival of the rain made everything more unpredictable, the car was sliding all over the place and putting together a good lap wasn’t easy. On my last run in Q3, I tried my best, but some mistakes cost me a few places. Even if I’m a bit disappointed, now I want to just think about tomorrow’s race, which will be a long one, with the chance of very variable weather. I will try and make up as many places as possible and in order to do that, it will be very important to make the right decisions at the right time.”

Williams:
Valtteri Bottas: “The final practice where I finished P1 showed that we have a very strong car in the dry, but wet conditions allow other cars to move closer to us and unfortunately we didn’t qualify as high today as we can. I lost some tyre temperature in my warm up lap because of traffic which is crucial for us and this made my final run trickier than the ones before, and throughout qualifying we were losing time in the second sector. Our wet pace has improved a lot though since the beginning of the season and P6 is still a good grid slot. We can still do a lot tomorrow and if it is a dry race then we stand a good chance of challenging Ferrari and Red Bull.”

Felipe Massa: “The rain was very tricky today and prevented us from showing our true pace. Our pace looked solid in Q1 and Q2, but I had traffic in Q3 on my warm up lap and because of that I was not able to warm my tyres up properly which stopped me getting the full performance out of the car on my flying lap. Even though the track was drying and getting quicker in Q3, I was slower than my Q2 time so that shows that I could have gone faster if my lap had come together. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully we can show the pace we have and move up the field.”