Austin: Qualifications Seen from the Stands

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – Pole position

Mark Webber – 2nd

Christian Horner, Team Principal: « A fantastic performance from our drivers today in a very exciting Q3. It was a seesaw battle between Mark and Sebastian, exchanging sector times, and in the end, Sebastian just managed to clinch pole position, securing the front row with Mark alongside. It’s a great team performance and a wonderful 40th birthday present!»

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Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 3rd

Heikki Kovalainen – 8th

Alan Permane, Track Operations Director: « We are thrilled with the performances of both drivers. Once again, Romain will lead the charge against the Red Bull after a reasonably easy progression during qualifying. Heikki has demonstrated that he undoubtedly has the ability to fight at the front, moving through the stages without major difficulty, despite his lack of experience with the car.

Barely arrived in the car, he has already produced exactly what we expected of him. He qualified solidly in the top 10 and he has a realistic chance to score good points tomorrow. We have seen this year, our car is often stronger in races than in qualifying, so his potential tomorrow is significant. Especially since he learns a bit more about the car with each lap.

Our pace on the long stints seems good and there are overtaking opportunities here. The track has evolved since last year, the grip is less difficult to find and that should help tire performance. We feel quite confident.

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Sauber

Nico Hülkenberg – 4th

Esteban Gutiérrez – 10th [20th on the grid]

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: « It’s a fantastic qualification! It’s great that the team is able to maintain its pace with both cars. This puts us in an excellent position for tomorrow’s race. »

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Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – 5th

Nico Rosberg – 14th [12th on the grid]

Ross Brawn, Team Principal: It was a very difficult qualifying session and certainly not the one we hoped for. Our cars seemed to suffer more than others in these conditions: the gusts of wind made the car lighter and it was difficult to get the front and rear tires in the right window at the same time. However, the conditions should be very different tomorrow, and I am optimistic about the setup of both cars and that we can achieve a decent race result.

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Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 6th

Felipe Massa – 15th [13th on the grid]

Pat Fry, Technical Director: Apart from the qualifying result, it is difficult to clearly explain how the weekend went. The performances seen up to today have been affected by a series of variables, and I think, aside from the Red Bull, the rest of the field has struggled more than usual to understand the reactions of the cars. The changing weather and varying grip levels have further complicated the setups and understanding of the tire behavior chosen for this race.

I’m sorry for Felipe who couldn’t make it into Q3. Even though he gave it his all, he’s struggling to find the right feel, especially due to the lack of grip. Fernando was able to adapt better, and the result he managed to achieve during a very difficult weekend is due to his great talent. Obviously, we aim higher than a sixth place, but the reduced gap compared to third place is a big boost for the whole team to do their best for the last part of the season.

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McLaren

Sergio Pérez – 7th

Jenson Button – 13th [15th on the grid]

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal: Checo did a great job to finish 7th today. I’m sure he’ll try to convert this good qualifying into a good result in tomorrow’s race. Jenson struggled with the balance of his car and the strong wind certainly didn’t help him. However, despite his three-place penalty, he will be determined to climb back up the field tomorrow as we have often seen him do in the past.

Finally, I hope that we at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes will be able to do our part to ensure that the United States Grand Prix is a fabulous event. F1 may not be as important in the United States as in other countries, but the fans in Austin are enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and the superb organization we see at the Circuit of the Americas is an excellent way to entertain and satisfy them.

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Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 9th

Pastor Maldonado – 18th [17th on the grid]

Xevi Pujolar, Chief Engineer: The Circuit of the Americas is unique in terms of track layout, hardness, and temperature. All of this combined with a very cautious tire choice made the ability to make the tires work properly the key to a successful qualifying lap. We had better performance during the first practice session and were working this morning to get back to that. We had both our cars in similar setups aiming for the optimal tire operating window. We knew that if we managed, we would be able to achieve a good result for both our cars. Valtteri managed to get his tires working well and delivered solid performances throughout the session to reach Q3. We couldn’t extract the maximum from Pastor’s tires, but despite his 18th place, he always makes good starts and fights in the early laps. We hope he can move up during the race. In general, it was great to see Valtteri qualify 9th, and we hope to convert this good result into points tomorrow.

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Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 11th [10th on the grid]

Jean-Eric Vergne – 16th [14th on the grid]

Laurent Mekies, Director of Performance: We had a lot of work to do last night after lacking pace on Friday. The result is that today we went in different directions with our two cars. With Daniel, we did well to recover to eleventh, a tenth off eighth place in Q2 and only a tenth behind cars that were a second faster yesterday. With JEV, there were ups and downs between this morning and qualifying. At some points, we had good pace but not at others. Unfortunately, the progress made in the morning didn’t carry through to qualifying. He was fast in Q1 but couldn’t replicate the same performance in Q2. However, with the progress made since day one, we can hope that our pace over the long runs will be better tomorrow and we can hope that both cars will be competitive enough to lead the midfield.

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Force India

Paul di Resta – 12th [11th on the grid]

Adrian Sutil – 17th [16th on the grid]

Vijay Mallya, Team Owner: « A mixed qualifying result for Force India. Paul had a good session and made a nice progression between FP3 and qualifying. He’s in a good position to race for points tomorrow. Adrian was unlucky with the traffic, which compromised his best opportunity in Q1. His last chance to do a fast lap ended with a front-right brake disc failure in the first corner, which caused a puncture. It’s unfortunate because he couldn’t show the true speed of the car. Our task now is to try and use strategy to put him in the race for points. »

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Caterham

Giedo Van der Garde – 19th [18th on the grid]

Charles Pic – 21st [22nd on the grid]

Caterham has not published the statements of the team’s representatives.

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Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 20th [19th on the grid]

Max Chilton – 22nd [21st on the grid]

John Booth, Team Director: « After a long night spent studying a lot of data, we identified some of the problems that affected our balance yesterday, especially for Jules. This morning’s FP3 session was really about gathering more data to see what solutions we could find for these issues, and we believed we had solved them. However, when we completed the last stint on medium tires, the car still struggled with balance. Between sessions, we evaluated all the data and came back with a modified solution, reverting to settings that were closer to those from Suzuka, and it significantly improved the balance. As usual in this situation, you’re dealing with more than one problem, so it’s good that we were able to clear many difficulties, allowing Jules to fight against the Caterhams. In hindsight, we probably spent a bit too much time focusing on our race balance, and that might be why we got a bit lost, but it seems that now we’re back on track and we’ll see how these settings perform in the race tomorrow. Max didn’t have an easy day today, and his balance, although improved in qualifying, was certainly not as good as Jules’. It’s a shame we weren’t able to give him a better car, but we’ll look into what went wrong and see what we can do to help him progress. With all this, the race should be interesting. »

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