F1: GRAND PRIX SINGAPORE QUALIFYING

MERCEDES GP PETRONAS drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher qualified in seventh and ninth places for the Singapore Grand Prix following this evening’s qualifying hour at the floodlit Marina Bay Circuit. The pair will line up on the fourth and fifth rows of the grid for tomorrow’s 61-lap race which starts under the lights at 8pm.

Weather

Hot & humid

Temperatures

Air: 28-29°C Track: 27-28°C

“I feel that we should have done slightly better in qualifying today however seventh position is still ok, especially as I found the soft tyre quite difficult to drive and lacking rear grip. We are starting from the clean side of the grid so it will be important to have a good start. We need to keep scoring points in the remaining races so that will be our aim.”

“Our target was to get into Q3 which we achieved so I’m reasonably happy with our qualifying performance today. We tried various set-ups throughout the sessions and whilst they paid off at some points, they did not at others. But it was a lot of fun driving the track at this time of night and it really is a special experience. It is definitely different to drive in the artificial light but it doesn’t compromise your performance at all. Starting from ninth place means starting from the presumably better side of the grid so the plan must be to try and gain some positions at the start and go from there.”

“We’re reasonably happy with our performance so far this weekend. We weren’t as comfortable with the car yesterday but the engineers and drivers did a great job overnight to find some improvements and we have probably qualified where we should be with the car that we have. We could perhaps have squeezed a little more out of Q3 but it is still a decent result. Nico and Michael are starting from the good side and the car is handling fairly well and seems to be pretty easy on the tyres. So we’re in a good position to have a strong race tomorrow and well done to the team for getting the most out of the car today.”

“Seventh place for Nico and ninth position for Michael with both drivers split by less than three tenths of a second is a respectable team effort with the technical package that we currently have and the team did a good job overnight to resolve the issues that we were struggling with yesterday. Michael did well on his first visit to this special and challenging street circuit and Nico again achieved the best possible qualifying result for us. The race will be very long and tough with the five World Championship contenders starting in front of us. Our drivers will be positioned on the clean side of the circuit where more grip is available so hopefully this will help them to gain places at the start.”