Italy: Qualifications seen from the stands

McLaren

Lewis Hamilton – Pole Position

Jenson Button – 2nd on the grid

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal: I am extremely proud of the entire team, all of its members have worked incredibly hard to develop our car so well throughout the year. Today’s front row is the fitting reward for all their efforts.

In fact, I was told that we now hold the record for the most front rows in Formula One history, which is quite an achievement. So I would like to say well done, not only to the women and men who worked hard to make our car fast today, but also to all those men and women who have worked just as hard over the past 46 years, since McLaren first took part in a Grand Prix in 1966.

But what matters is tomorrow, and I’m delighted to say that we did a lot of work for the race yesterday, so we hope to be in good shape for it.

Returning to today, Lewis and Jenson both drove impeccably, capitalizing on the impressive pace of our car in sectors one and two, and optimizing its capabilities in the third sector where it was less competitive than our rivals. It may have seemed easy for them, but it wasn’t. In fact, they both had to keep their composure until the end of their fast laps. Well done, guys!

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Ferrari

Felipe Massa – 3rd on the grid

Fernando Alonso – 10th on the grid

Stefano Domenicali, Team Director: « What happened to Fernando this afternoon is really unfortunate because we could have offered pole position to the fantastic Monza crowd. Felipe had a good qualifying session and we are happy he is also back in the fight for the top positions on Saturday. All signs were pointing to a great afternoon, but if you don’t have 100% reliability, then you pay the price, and today confirmed that once again. First and foremost, we want to understand what happened at the back of Fernando’s car, but most importantly, we must immediately put behind us the disappointment we feel right now to prepare ourselves as best as possible for a race that should be very tough, in every respect. 53 laps of Monza is a lot, and anything can still happen. I remain convinced that we can still achieve a result for both championships, but clearly, if everything had gone smoothly today, we would have had a better chance. »

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Mercedes

Michael Schumacher – 4th on the grid

**Nico Rosberg** – 6th on the grid

Ross Brawn, Team Director: « It was a solid qualifying session from the team this afternoon. The key to this session was using the tires well and making sure they were perfect for the timed laps. We may have managed to extract a bit more from our package today in terms of pure performance, but our positions are close to our maximum on this circuit. For the first time in several races, the preparation for the race yesterday was not disrupted by the weather, so we were able to do a lot of work with different fuel levels. Now we will have to see how this translates during tomorrow’s race. »

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Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – 5th on the grid

Mark Webber – 11th on the grid

Christian Horner, Team Principal: « It was a tough qualifying session for us; we knew it was going to be hard. We breezed through Q1 without pressure after Hülkenberg stopped early in the session. Unfortunately, Mark missed out on Q3 by the smallest of margins. Sebastian delivered a good lap in Q3, finishing 6th, which will become 5th on the starting grid tomorrow [with di Resta’s penalty]. Hopefully, our race pace will be stronger than what we showed today and we can fight with the cars ahead of us. It’s quite a unique circuit. »

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Lotus

Kimi Räikkönen – 7th on the grid

Jérôme d’Ambrosio – 15th on the grid

Alan Permane, Track Operations Director: « We are a bit disappointed with our position on the grid. We were aiming for 6th place with Kimi and we missed it by five hundredths. Fernando [Alonso] was ahead of Kimi on his last lap and normally, this should have given him a good slipstream. Unfortunately, in this lap, Fernando wasn’t fast and Kimi got too close to him at the Ascari chicane, which cost us about one and a half tenths. That’s how qualifying goes sometimes.

We are confident of having a good race, given the level of support we have on the car. Our tire wear is generally lower than that of our competitors, and this should help us as well. We are confident in having a good race and scoring good points.

Regarding Jérôme d’Ambrosio, he was on a steep learning curve and did a good job. The race will be difficult for him tomorrow with the low downforce specification, particularly attacking the chicanes in this configuration. We hope that his steady progress this weekend will continue in the race because anything can happen tomorrow.

The two types of tires are very close to each other. The medium had a slight advantage for qualifying today, but it also degraded very little when we did long runs with it.

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Sauber

Kamui Kobayashi – 8th on the grid

Sergio Pérez – 12th on the grid

Gianpaolo Dall’Ara, Head of Track Engineering: « During the morning, we made up some of the ground we lost yesterday. We found good directions for the car. In qualifying, we easily made it through Q1 and then it was up to the drivers. Our performance was very close to some of our rivals, so it was really a matter of fractions of a second to be in the Top 10 or not, and therefore be more or less high on the grid. I am confident that we can have a good race from these positions. »

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Force India

Paul di Resta – 9th on the grid

Nico Hülkenberg – 24th on the grid

Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Director: « We had a very competitive car today, and Paul delivered an excellent performance to achieve the fourth fastest time in Q3: it was his fastest lap of the weekend and his best qualifying performance. It’s just unfortunate that he received a five-place penalty for a gearbox change. Nevertheless, he will be there tomorrow and will have a solid race.

The big disappointment of the session was the technical failure on Nico’s car, which we believe is related to fuel pressure. Without this issue, I am confident that we would have placed both cars in the Top 10.

The task now is to leave here with points to solidify our position in the championship.

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Williams

Bruno Senna – 13th on the grid

Pastor Maldonado – 22nd on the grid

Mark Gillan, Chief Engineer: « After decent Free Practice 3 sessions this morning, we were hoping for a good qualifying session. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough pace to get into Q3 with Pastor and Bruno finishing 12th and 14th respectively. The conditions should be the same tomorrow, and we will have to push hard in the race to bring both cars to the finish and into the points. »

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Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 14th on the grid

Jean-Eric Vergne – 16th on the grid

Laurent Mékies, Chief Engineer: « After analyzing all the data last night and making some changes to the car, in absolute terms, we made a step forward. On Friday, we were not happy with the car’s balance and we made progress in that area, so Daniel and JEV were a bit happier today. Even though the performance improved, it wasn’t enough to go beyond the fifteenth place in what was a very tight session. We worked on race preparation on Friday, so I hope we can improve our pace a bit tomorrow, and combined with the fact that the STR7 seems to have good top speed, this could offer us some great battles on the track. »

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Caterham

Heikki Kovalainen – 17th on the grid

Vitaly Petrov – 18th on the grid

The Caterham team has not published the statements of the team leaders.

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Marussia

Translate: Timo Glock – 19th on the grid

Charles Pic – 20th on the grid

John Booth, Team Director: « Today we have taken a good step forward before tomorrow’s race and we have come closer to our goal of competing more with our immediate competitors in qualifying. Our drivers have done a good job even though they didn’t have much track time: Timo experienced an issue with his second set of tires while we had to adjust the settings on Charles’s car for better performance. Nonetheless, it’s clear that things are going better for us, especially in the race. I hope everything will come together tomorrow. »

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HRT

Narain Karthikeyan – 21st on the grid

Pedro de la Rosa – 23rd on the grid

Toni Cuquerella, Technical Director: Monza is a circuit with low downforce where we expected to have a good pace, allowing us to get closer to the leaders. And that was the case. This morning, we worked on adjusting the settings, and during the qualifying, we opted for a level of downforce and gear ratios with tomorrow’s race in mind. Monza is a circuit where even the smallest mistake is costly because the straights are long. The data collected with the tires suggests that one stop should be the most common strategy since it’s not a demanding circuit for the tires.

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Discover the summary and results of the 2012 Italian Grand Prix Qualifying or relive our live coverage.