Saturday: the Ferrari drivers could not do better

Felipe Massa – 5th and 5th

I’m happy with my performance today. I think I had a good lap on my last stint, after the first in Q3, where I used the same super soft tires as in Q2. I feel that we are better now on Saturdays, but there are still four cars ahead of us, so the position on the grid remains more or less the same. We were all worried about tire wear before arriving here, but from what we observed today, it seems less severe than expected. We will see how it goes tomorrow. I am confident: if nothing strange happens to me, unlike the recent races, then I think I could do well here. The last time I was on the podium was a year ago here, even though the weather was very different from what we can expect tomorrow. Finally, I want to express my condolences to two people who have recently left us: Maria Martins Bassi, the grandmother of Raffaela my wife, and Pasquale Danza, whom I met for the first time ten years ago when I joined Ferrari and with whom I shared very good moments, both on the circuits and at Maranello.

Fernando Alonso – 4th and 6th

I can’t be happy to be sixth, but this position reflects our current situation: McLaren and Red Bull are better than us so we can only fight for 5th and 6th places. That’s how it goes on Saturday, but tomorrow it could end like in Suzuka and we could find ourselves fighting for victory again. When tire wear is high, we are generally in a good position, but the situation here is not very clear because the behavior of the super softs on long stints with a full fuel load is not yet known. We considered using these tires from Q1 but eventually decided not to take too many risks. Today, we lost too much time in the first sector because we lack top speed. On my last stint, I immediately lost a few tenths in the first corner and then couldn’t make up the lost time, so I decided not to finish the lap. Unfortunately, I will start on the dirty side, which should be a big disadvantage here, so I hope not to lose a place to Rosberg. We will have to stay alert to what happens in front of us to exploit the strategy in our favor. The new front wing? I don’t like to talk about individual components; on one hand, I think the engineers did a good job, and on the other, I prefer to share my opinions only with the team.

Stefano Domenicali – Director of Scuderia Ferrari

The whole team is sad because one of ours, Pasquale Danza, passed away today. He worked for Ferrari for many years with passion and dedication. On behalf of the entire Scuderia, I would like to offer my deepest sympathy to his family; all our thoughts are with them and him at this moment. You can understand how difficult it is to comment on this qualifying session now… We cannot be surprised by the outcome, because we are aware of our potential. But that does not mean we are resigned; on the contrary, in fact. Only eight days ago, we were in a similar position, and 24 hours later, we were close to victory. But we will have to wait and see how things unfold tomorrow, and then we can make calculations.