Saturday: At McLaren, Hamilton excels, Button limits the damage

Lewis Hamilton – 3rd and 2nd:

« I was very happy with my lap: I squeezed every bit out of the car and I didn’t expect to be so high up on the grid. In fact, I struggled a bit in Q1 and Q2, and I wasn’t sure about my best pace, but luckily, in the end, I put it all together in Q3.

Compared to yesterday, things have been a bit more complicated for us today. It was hard to get the tires working as they should: the higher temperatures today made it more difficult, I think. But I am very happy with our performance and being on the front row, from where we can have a really good race here. And, remember, our pace on long runs was good yesterday, so I am really looking forward to racing. That said, I will do everything I can to manage my tires.

Finally, the guys have also worked very hard to improve our pit stops, so I think there are a lot of good things to come.

Jenson Button – 15th and 10th:

For Q3, we were a bit stuck with our tire choice: using worn Super Softs would probably have left us 10th, so we decided to take a gamble by qualifying on new Softs. It was a tough decision, and in hindsight, we shouldn’t have run at all.

It was going to be difficult anyway to beat anyone in Q3 with the Softs, since all the others were on Super Softs, but we didn’t have any new ones left. So we wanted to give ourselves that chance.

Today was not great, I would say, and tenth place is not the best, but it will be even hotter tomorrow – probably the hottest race of the year so far – which might hold surprises for everyone. I think we can still have a good race, even from the fifth row.