MCLAREN TAKE THEIR 63RD FRONT ROW START AT MONZA.

Lewis Hamilton:  I think practice was a lot better for me, I did much better laps in practice”Generally I didn’t think that lap was anywhere near good enough and I was up a couple of tenths on my second lap, but I was in a train of cars so was not able to better my lap.Nonetheless I am happy, and happy for team – they are doing a fantastic job. They had great success in the last race with Jenson and to have us both up here is what they deserve. I haven’t had any distractions this weekend so it’s been positive. The support from family and friends has been incredible so I’m enjoying the weekend, and it’s been pretty smooth weekend.”

Jenson Button:  Drafting is something that personally I feel it is difficult to plan. It is difficult to get it right. You concentrate too much on it and getting the braking point right. The way we did it was much better, just finding traffic on the circuit. In Q3 I realised how much difference a tow makes, I was able to get a reasonable tow off Vettel, which surprisingly made a big difference.” For us both to be on the front row is fantastic for the team. The last three races we have shown strength, and qualifying both cars on front row is great, so thank you very much. It doesn’t matter who is alongside you, the first corner is always an interesting corner, especially because it is such a long run down there. You cannot plan it.

Fernando Alonso:  It’s a shame because I think it would have been the easiest pole position of the year for us. vWe did 1m24.1s in Q1 with an easy lap and then looking at it, 1m24.0s was, let’s say, easy for us to do. We lost one big opportunity but nothing we can do now. We’ll try to be strong tomorrow, the car will be fixed and we will see what we can do from 10th. Something broke in the car in Q3, so we had no time to fix it, so we went out just to see if we could beat some of the cars but unfortunately we were not able because we lost too much performance.

Stefano Domenicali : Yes! it was an issue with the rollbar. It seems to be a proble with the rear bar, It seems to be a mechanical failure. We need to wait for the car to come back. We knew that the car was not good because Fernando understood exactly the situation straight away, so that’s very unfortunate but that’s the way it is. Of course we are very disappointed because we could have done a great qualifying with Fernando and at least we are pleased that Felipe did a good job. He is there just behind the McLarens.

Pos Driver Car Time Gap
 1.  Lewis Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes      1m24.010s
 2.  Jenson Button       McLaren-Mercedes      1m24.133s  + 0.123s
 3.  Felipe Massa        Ferrari               1m24.247s  + 0.237s
 4.  Paul di Resta       Force India-Mercedes  1m24.304s  + 0.294s***
 5.  Michael Schumacher  Mercedes              1m24.540s  + 0.530s
 6.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull-Renault      1m24.802s  + 0.792s
 7.  Nico Rosberg        Mercedes              1m24.833s  + 0.823s
 8.  Kimi Raikkonen      Lotus-Renault         1m24.855s  + 0.845s
 9.  Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari        1m25.109s  + 1.099s
10.  Fernando Alonso     Ferrari               1m25.678s  + 1.668s
Q2 cut-off time: 1m24.742s                                Gap *
11.  Mark Webber         Red Bull-Renault      1m24.809s  + 0.567s
12.  Pastor Maldonado    Williams-Renault      1m24.820s  + 0.578s****
13.  Sergio Perez        Sauber-Ferrari        1m24.901s  + 0.659s
14.  Bruno Senna         Williams-Renault      1m25.042s  + 0.800s
15.  Daniel Ricciardo    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m25.312s  + 1.070s
16.  Jerome d'Ambrosio   Lotus-Renault         1m25.408s  + 1.166s
17.  Jean-Eric Vergne    Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m25.441s  + 1.199s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m25.834s                                Gap **
18.  Heikki Kovalainen   Caterham-Renault      1m26.382s  + 2.207s
19.  Vitaly Petrov       Caterham-Renault      1m26.887s  + 2.712s
20.  Timo Glock          Marussia-Cosworth     1m27.039s  + 2.864s
21.  Charles Pic         Marussia-Cosworth     1m27.073s  + 2.898s
22.  Narain Karthikeyan  HRT-Cosworth          1m27.441s  + 3.266s
23.  Pedro de la Rosa    HRT-Cosworth          1m27.629s  + 3.454s
24.  Nico Hulkenberg     Force India-Mercedes