Saturday: McLaren ahead of Ferrari and hopes to beat Red Bull in India
It seemed difficult for the McLaren drivers to challenge Red Bull for the front row, but Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will do everything to make their team shine at the Indian Grand Prix, relying on their race pace for that. Moreover, the two MP4-27s will be ahead of the two F2012s on the grid, their rivals in the constructors' standings.
Lewis Hamilton – 4th and 3rd:
« I am really satisfied to be starting from the second row for tomorrow’s race. It is one of the best circuits we race on and I definitely think that the third position gives us a chance to fight for victory tomorrow. Even if I had made a perfect lap in qualifying, I think I would have only found an extra tenth. I acknowledge that I extracted everything from the car, especially during my last stint in Q3: the last two sectors were particularly strong.
Tomorrow, for the start, I think I have less to lose than Sebastian [Vettel] in front of me, so I’m definitely going to push a little. Seb has more to worry about than I do, and I would like to win for McLaren. We have the race pace to stick with the Red Bulls, so I’m sure victory is possible.
Jenson Button – 2nd and 4th:
Fourth place is not a bad position to launch from tomorrow. We had a bit of trouble getting the Soft tires to work, particularly on the first lap, so I adopted a different strategy from the other drivers with a three-lap stint. In fact, doing a longer stint worked really well for me in Q2, but I didn’t really have the right balance in Q3: I had a bit more understeer while the track found more grip than we expected. In terms of performance, my Q2 lap was better than my Q3 lap.
Overall, as a team, we can be reasonably happy with what we achieved today: we are not far from the Red Bulls and we are ahead of the Ferraris. Therefore, I am very excited about tomorrow’s race. Our starts are quite good, so we’ll see what we can do from the second row.
