Saturday: the McLarens lie in ambush

Lewis Hamilton – 3rd

The Red Bulls seem very strong, but I will do my best to jump one, if not both, at the start. I hope to be able to attack tomorrow. When you start on the clean side of the track, you automatically have a much better opportunity to get a good start, and this year, I have generally been on the dirty side of the track, so tomorrow will be a bonus for me. […] My goal will be to be first at the first corner. It usually doesn’t happen that way, but as long as I don’t lose a place, I’ll be happy.

When you try to get the most out of the car, you sometimes end up locking the front wheel, and that’s what happened to me on my last lap. Even though there’s a slight flat spot on the front-left, we’re going to fix it by adjusting the wheel balance: it’ll be fine.

We certainly made a step forward this weekend. We keep pushing, we don’t give up, and with the DRS, we should see some action tomorrow.

Jenson Button – 5th

« I feel like I did a good lap, so I’m happy: my car kept getting better during the session and I was only three-tenths slower than Lewis. It was unlucky not to be 3rd, but Fernando got in between us.

One important point is that, like Lewis, I will be starting on the clean side of the track. The other is that, like Lewis, I have two sets of soft tires that have only done one lap and another completely new set: that will be the key tomorrow.

There is a big difference between the soft and hard ones here, so there will be differences in race strategies. We will study this tonight.

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal

There is a big speed difference between the soft and hard tires here in Barcelona, so most teams had no choice but to use the soft tires right from Q1, for fear of not making it to Q2. Fortunately, like Red Bull, we were able to save the soft tires.

Lewis and Jenson will be 3rd and 5th on the grid, respectively; in other words, they will both start from the clean side tomorrow.

In reality, they could have gone faster but they went out when there was less wind and we could have used the KERS under optimal conditions, but I don’t think we would have been as fast as the Red Bull. To be honest, our KERS system is excellent, thanks to the work done by Mercedes, but we had difficulties bringing it up to optimal temperature today.

Despite everything, we are a little closer to the race pace of the Red Bulls than we are in qualifying, we have two brilliant drivers with Lewis and Jenson, and as I said, they will start from the clean side of the track, which promises an exciting race tomorrow.