Formula One

BELGIAN GRAND PRIX QUALIFYING

JENSON BUTTON TAKES HIS FIRST POLE SINCE MONACO 2009

SEBASTIAN VETTEL LAYS AN EGG, KIMI DISAPPOINTS BUT KAMUI SURPRISES WITH A FRONT ROW START.                                      

KAMUI KOBAYASHI: “Spa is one of our favourite tracks, but we didn’t expect to be second.

Normally we struggle in qualifying and in the race we are not really worried, but this is where we wanted to improve.

This is our favourite circuit, but we didn’t expect second.

I think we have great opportunity for tomorrow so this is really a good restart for the rest of the season. We need to be really strong in qualifying and in this break, the guys did some great work. We had a chat with them and we are happy to be here and confident. It is great. I always focus on Sunday, not qualifying, so this is a good point but I want to focus more on tomorrow,”he added.

If we can get on podium tomorrow then that is something good.

We need to look at tyre management, we need to take a little bit of care, and we need to finish the race.”

Kimi Räikkönen,
“It wasn’t the easiest of qualifying sessions. The car is okay but it doesn’t look like we have the speed that some others have and we were certainly not quick enough for pole today. The race is a different story. On the grid we’re in front of of the guys who are ahead of us in the championship so we’ll try to score more points than them.”

MARK WEBBER, Position: 7th, (3rd Practice – P7, 1:49.164)

“I’m disappointed. We would like to have been higher up the grid to take the sting out of the penalty (5 places), but we’ll have to see what we can do tomorrow. We weren’t quick enough and couldn’t challenge for the front row today; I was pretty happy with my lap but I think P5 would have been our maximum today. We have a long race tomorrow and there should be some good opportunities to come through the field. Clearly we’re out of position a little and we have work to do, but the Team is a quality operation and we know what hard work is all about. We just need to keep pushing.”

SEBASTIAN VETTEL, Position: 11th, (3rd Practice – P9, 1:49.292)

“I felt pretty good this morning, the laps didn’t come together but the car felt good. There was nothing obvious that was wrong this afternoon, I was pretty happy with my lap, it was clean, but it just wasn’t quick enough. It’s a shame to miss Q3 by such a small margin, but that’s racing. We’ve seen in the last races that our car is pretty good in the race so we will see what we can do.”  

CHRISTIAN HORNER: “A different looking grid for tomorrow. Unfortunately with Mark we have to take a 5-place grid penalty, which we knew of in Hungary, but it was right to finish the race there. We felt it would be better to strategically take the penalty here than sacrifice points in Budapest. With Sebastian he appeared to struggle quite a lot in the second sector and unfortunately just missed the cut. Congratulations to Jenson on his pole. We will be racing hard to make up positions tomorrow.”

Pos Driver Car Time Gap
 1.  Jenson Button       McLaren-Mercedes      1m47.573s
 2.  Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari        1m47.871s  + 0.298s
 3.  Pastor Maldonado    Williams-Renault      1m47.893s  + 0.320s
 4.  Kimi Raikkonen      Lotus-Renault         1m48.205s  + 0.632s
 5.  Sergio Perez        Sauber-Ferrari        1m48.219s  + 0.646s
 6.  Fernando Alonso     Ferrari               1m48.313s  + 0.740s
 7.  Mark Webber         Red Bull-Renault      1m48.392s  + 0.819s***
 8.  Lewis Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes      1m48.394s  + 0.821s
 9.  Romain Grosjean     Lotus-Renault         1m48.538s  + 0.965s
10.  Paul di Resta       Force India-Mercedes  1m48.890s  + 1.317s
Q2 cut-off time: 1m48.993s Gap *
11.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull-Renault      1m49.722s  + 0.472s
12.  Nico Hulkenberg     Force India-Mercedes  1m49.362s  + 0.112s
13.  Michael Schumacher  Mercedes              1m49.742s  + 0.492s
14.  Felipe Massa        Ferrari               1m49.588s  + 0.338s
15.  Jean-Eric Vergne    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m49.763s  + 0.513s
16.  Daniel Ricciardo    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m49.572s  + 0.322s
17.  Bruno Senna         Williams-Renault      1m49.958s  + 0.708s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m50.126s Gap **
18.  Nico Rosberg        Mercedes              1m50.181s  + 1.188s***
19.  Heikki Kovalainen   Caterham-Renault      1m51.739s  + 2.746s
20.  Vitaly Petrov       Caterham-Renault      1m51.967s  + 2.974s
21.  Timo Glock          Marussia-Cosworth     1m52.336s  + 3.343s
22.  Pedro de la Rosa    HRT-Cosworth          1m53.030s  + 4.037s
23.  Charles Pic         Marussia-Cosworth     1m53.493s  + 4.500s
24.  Narain Karthikeyan  HRT-Cosworth          1m54.989s  + 5.996s