Germany: The Qualifications Seen from the Stands

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – Pole position

Nico Rosberg – 11th

Ross Brawn, Team Director: « It’s no small statement today that we have mixed emotions after the qualifications. Lewis managed a superb lap to clinch pole position. He wasn’t comfortable with the car from the start of practice on Friday, but I could sense his determination during this session and he did a very good job. With Nico, we underestimated how much the track would improve, and we got knocked out; he clearly had the pace to qualify at the front today, but he ended up on the wrong side of the top 10 by just half a tenth. In the end, the final decision on the pit wall falls to me, and it’s clear that we could have done a better job today. For tomorrow, the only silver lining for Nico is that he has the choice of tires for the first stint, even though there is also a nice mix of tires in the top 10 as well. As for Lewis, we will approach the race with some questions, as we haven’t done proper running with the current car setup. Let’s hope he finds the balance he needs, and we can fight with Red Bull, Ferrari, and Lotus. »

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Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – 2nd

Mark Webber – 3rd

Christian Horner, Team Principal: Starting 2nd and 3rd on the grid for the German Grand Prix is obviously a very good team performance. It was very close for pole position and in the end, Lewis managed to do a lap a tenth quicker than us, but nevertheless, it was a great team effort today and Sebastian did his best in front of his fans with Mark just behind him in 3rd place. Tomorrow’s race will be very interesting with several strategies and our goal will be to try to capitalize on our grid positions.

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Lotus

Kimi Räikkönen – 4th

Romain Grosjean – 5th

Alan Permane, Track Operations Director: We are reasonably satisfied with our performance. Of course, we always want to do better and we could have achieved that since neither driver managed a good first sector in the final phase. That said, we are happy with the 4th and 5th positions on the grid. Our race simulations yesterday were good, and the weather forecast for tomorrow predicts high temperatures. So I think we can expect to perform strongly in the race. The new rear tire construction, with the reinforced Kevlar belt, doesn’t seem to diminish our performance. We are as competitive as we anticipated, so we have no concerns on that front. The medium compound seems favored because the soft shows a fairly high performance degradation. So much so that we saw the Ferraris opting for a start on mediums. It will be interesting to see if their approach works. As for us, starting on the softs suits us rather well.

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Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 6th

Translate: Jean-Eric Vergne – 16th

Laurent Mekies, Head of Performance: « Daniel qualified in the same position as at Silverstone, but today it was more unexpected. It didn’t seem so promising yesterday and we changed a lot of things on both cars and tried several directions on both cars, for our qualifying approach and to try to elevate our performance level. Clearly, we were more successful with Daniel than with JEV, even with the different tire strategies seen in Q3, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out tomorrow. We found pace today and even though there’s a significant gap between our two cars, we expect them to have the same pace in the race. We will do our best in terms of strategy to get JEV up tomorrow. As for Daniel, he did a very good lap in Q1 and Q2, and also in Q3, and he was really in another category today. »

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Ferrari

Felipe Massa – 7th

Fernando Alonso – 8th

Pat Fry, Technical Director: The comparison made yesterday between the soft and medium tires opened the door to several possibilities, both for qualifying and the race, and today’s result is exactly what we expected. The decision to approach qualifying with a focus solely on race strategy was dictated by the difference in tire degradation between the two compounds. Overall, the performance of our car was good, although it was affected by several factors, particularly the high temperatures seen today. Even though Felipe and Fernando were leading in Q1 and Q2, we stuck with our initial choice. We did not think it was a realistic goal to fight for the front rows, and we preferred to maintain our pace by trying a different strategy. Clearly, as always, tomorrow everything will depend on the competitiveness of our two F138s and their pace. From one perspective, we believe that the high degradation of the soft tires will force the rivals ahead of us to make an early pit stop and that traffic will limit their pace, while we can complete a longer first stint, allowing us to make up ground.

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McLaren

Jenson Button – 9th

Sergio Pérez – 13th

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Director « In Q2, it was encouraging that Jenson was 4 tenths from the leader, but it’s not yet where we would like to be. It is very likely that Jenson could have qualified 6th, but strategically, we decided to do what we thought was best for the race. I think we did the right thing by having Jenson run in Q3: we were so close to the pack in Q2 that we thought to push a little more to gain a few extra places. However, in the end, we preferred to be more cautious.

Nevertheless, it’s not a bad thing to start 9th, especially since we think those who have soft tires ahead of us will have to stop early in the race. We had some problems with Sergio’s car this morning, and I don’t think we managed to get back to our best level. He simply wasn’t as comfortable as Jenson. I’m sure he’s disappointed with the outcome of the qualifying, but he’s a great competitor, and I’m sure he’s going to push very hard in the race. So we hope to score points with both cars tomorrow.

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Sauber

Nico Hülkenberg – 10th

Esteban Gutiérrez – 14th

Tom McCullough, Track Engineering Manager: « Our two drivers were happy with the changes made to the car overnight, and we seemed more competitive before qualifying. Our goal was to qualify better than in previous Grand Prix to make it easier to score points, and we achieved that today. The weather forecast predicts even higher temperatures for tomorrow, so we’ll take that into account for our strategy. Our pace on long runs was good during Free Practice 2, and we aim to score points with the strategy we’ve chosen for tomorrow. »

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Force India

Paul di Resta – 12th

Adrian Sutil – 15th

Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: It’s difficult to determine if the change in tire construction affected the team’s performance, but regardless of the reason, we didn’t find what we needed this weekend, and it showed in our qualifying performance this afternoon. The changes made to Paul’s car before qualifying were a step in the right direction, and this 12th place is a good effort all things considered. Adrian was happier with the balance but was compromised by a DRS problem, which prevented him from reaching Q3 today. This means we are further back on the grid than we would have liked, but we remain optimistic about our chances of fighting for points with both our cars tomorrow.

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Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 17th

Pastor Maldonado – 18th

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: « We experienced a difficult start to the day due to the failure of the KERS on Pastor’s car this morning, which is still under investigation, but the team did a great job to be ready in time for free practice 3. In this session, we could see that we had more speed but were lacking grip. We made a few changes at the start of qualifying, but unfortunately, it didn’t improve as much as we had hoped. Pastor then encountered a water pump leak issue, which means he could only do one flying lap. Both drivers also struggled to get their tires up to temperature. We now need to focus on tomorrow’s race to see what we can do. »

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Caterham

Charles Pic – 19th

Giedo Van der Garde – 21st

Caterham did not release statements from the team’s representatives.

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Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 20th

Max Chilton – 22nd

John Booth, Team Director: « We were all delighted to see Jules in good form this morning. Even though he’s not yet at 100%, he was able to make significant progress during this morning’s third practice session. We had him run with a race pace to adapt to the new rear tires we have this weekend, which means there was a big gap with those running low fuel at the end of the third practice session. His laps in qualifying were very focused, and he can be pleased with his result, as can the rest of the team who analyzed data from Silverstone to find the best settings for here. This allowed us to not only get closer to our direct competitors but also to the rest of the field.

Max’s pace this morning on Mediums was at the level of our expectations, but the gain with the softs was not as great as anticipated. I’m sure he will work hard with his engineers during the evening to have the best possible race tomorrow.

It is therefore a pleasant day for us and we look forward to the race, which could be marked by interesting strategies. This will thus be our priority for the evening.

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