Reproduced with kind permission of the FIA
Drivers: 1. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari), 1m 45.390s; 2. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull), 1m 45.457s; 3. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren), 1m 45.571s.
Q: Fernando, a thrilling qualifying battle with the lead changing between you and Sebastian sector by sector on that final run but you did it.
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, obviously it was not an easy qualifying. We had very little running in dry conditions as it seemed to remain damp on some parts of the circuit during the weekend, so we arrived to qualifying not completely 100 per cent confident in the car in some of the corners. We build up the confidence in Q1 and Q2 and then in Q3 we tried to push at the limits. Both of my tyres worked really well and both attempts were similar in terms of lap time. Obviously in the car we don’t know what others are doing but I was quite happy with my lap. I did not know if it was enough to be on pole, second or fourth but I think we got 100 per cent out of the car today, so that was the main target for us.
Q: There was an engine concern for your team-mate Felipe Massa. You had to re-map your engine. What was the problem?
FA: Well, we tried to understand Felipe’s problem. Looking at the telemetry until the car is back probably we will not know, so we made some safe changes in the car just to avoid any risk. We were running with some experimental things here and after Felipe’s problem we went back to the standard ones. We had a problem the first time we changed it, so in Q2 we were running with the wrong maps in the car and we were lucky to get into Q3 and then in Q3 with the right maps the car was feeling better.
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