Ferrari duo on second row

In a close qualifying session, the Ferrari duo put down another good performance. Michael Schumacher will start 3rd on the starting grid tomorrow and his Brazilian team mate Felipe Massa will start from 4th position.

Jean Todt "Once again, we witnessed a very close qualifying session today. Tomorrow, we will have an all-red second row, with the two cars of our main rival ahead of us. Both our drivers did well. Tomorrow, reliability and tyre performance and Bridgestone has made a great job of that for this race. Given that overtaking is very difficult, it's clear that strategy will play a key role in deciding the outcome and tomorrow we will find out who got it right."

Michael Schumacher "I am quite happy with third place on the grid, as we knew we might have to lose a bit in qualifying, because we based our decision about tyres more on how they would perform in the race. So, the second row is not a big problem as we know we can expect a strong race pace. Unlike at the Nurburgring, this time, I start from the clean side of the grid. As for race strategy, there are two possibilities and now we will have to make sure we pick the best one."

Felipe Massa "It was a good qualifying. A start from the front two rows is vital and we managed to reach this target. On my final run in Q3, I came up against a bit of traffic in the final sector, but I'm happy with the way things went. I am very confident about the race in that we know we can count on getting very consistent performance from the Bridgestone tyres."

Ross Brawn "It was a very exciting session which kept our drivers and engineers busy right to the end. I think both Michael and Felipe did an excellent job. Obviously, you always hope to be as far forward as possible on the grid, but the cars are very good and it looks as though the Bridgestone tyres should give a strong performance over a long distance. There is good reason to be optimistic about tomorrow's race."