Bruno Senna (7th)“I am really quite satisfied with my qualifying and I don’t think my first weekend racing for Lotus Renault GP could have started much better; I wasn’t expecting to be in the top ten when I set out this afternoon. I was a little nervous going out in Q3 using dry tyres on a damp track, because I hadn’t managed much running on them this morning or yesterday. Bearing this in mind, I feel absolutely delighted with P7. Leading up to qualifying, I’d been working on getting a good performance in the wet, and I knew that if qualifying was fully wet I would be in a strong position, so to perform well on dry tyres is a fantastic feeling. Looking ahead to the race, I’ll take everything step by step. The car was very good to me in qualifying so I hope this is something that repeats itself tomorrow. This circuit has been kind to me in the past and I hope that continues; the weekend is just getting better and better for me!”

Vitaly Petrov (10th)“It’s a good feeling to qualify in the top ten again, even though I would like to have finished higher than P10. I will need to sit down with the engineers to discover what happened in Q3 when I spun, but the conditions throughout qualifying were very, very difficult. It was challenging for the team to know which tyres to select because the weather changed more than once in the hour-long session and this really tested us. As a whole, the weekend has been interesting because we’ve seen several different tyre compounds used, but the most important thing is we came out with both cars in the top ten. It’s good to see the team members with smiles on their faces once again!”

James Allison, Renault technical director“I’m delighted to have both our drivers in the top ten for tomorrow’s race, and I’m especially delighted with Bruno’s debut qualifying for us in what really were quite difficult conditions. When the lap times are changing that fast and you are not completely sure what level of grip you’re going to get at any given corner, then those are obviously very hard conditions. This is especially the case when you’ve not had time to use the car before the weekend, and when you’re at one of the most challenging circuits on the calendar. I’m very pleased for both Bruno and Vitaly, and after a run of uninspiring races I’m hoping that our top ten qualifying positions translate to strong races for both drivers tomorrow.”