Q: Fernando, a great looking pole lap. A couple of big moments going into the chicane this morning which perhaps disguised your speed, but no real mistakes on that lap.
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, it was a good lap. This morning we suffered a little bit with the set-up. I had to push a little bit more to find a better line in the chicane which is very complicated here. At the end, the qualifying laps were fine. I had two or three big moments in turn eight, I think. I braked a little bit too late, but at the end, I didn’t lose too much time and to be on pole here for the home Grand Prix for the team is really nice and a good feeling at the moment. But we have to wait and see how the race is tomorrow.

Q: You’ve shown a lot of speed over the last four races, but also a lot of bad luck and a great start at Indianapolis. Is it all going to change tomorrow?
FA: Yeah, I believe so. I believe so because at Monaco I had very bad luck, Nuerburgring I had a steering problem, and in Canada and Indy I retired with two mechanical problems so I’m sure that here the luck will come back and hopefully tomorrow we will finish the race.

Q: Michael, the lap looked very good going into it but fell away slightly towards the end there.
Michael Schumacher: Yup. If you look at the sector times, that’s what happened. We just weren’t competitive in the last sector, in qualifying in particular.

Q: Is that a function of the car and the circuit or perhaps how tyres react to this circuit?
MS: I think there are various factors that could be playing into that one. The ones you mentioned, strategy and set-up.

Q: What sort of weekend has it been for you, obviously fragmented with that rain yesterday.
MS: Obviously yesterday was a bit of a watch day rather than active day and we were able to recover today quite easily, I have to say. We found a good baseline and set-up so not too much of a worry – anyway, it was the same for everybody.

Q: And your thoughts for the race tomorrow from your point of view?
MS: Well, we’re in the first row, so we’re going to be there.

Q: David, great to see you here, first time McLaren have been in the top three in qualifying this year, the new 19B car showing a lot of promise.
David Coulthard: Yeah, obviously I think we’ve got to be pretty pleased with the result of this qualifying session. I think that fuel-levelwise we are where we would expect to be had we had the 19 here, so you can say that we have definitely taken a step forward and patched in some of the problems we had earlier on the season, so hopefully we can see a strong race and get some solid points and start building from here.

Q: Fun car to drive?
DC: Well any car that’s doing a lap time is fun and my experience in the past is when you have a quick car, sometimes it’s more difficult to drive than a car that’s further off the pace so…it’s tricky, but if it’s doing the lap time I don’t mind.

Q: Fernando, you have a slight gap over the two gentlemen next to you but the grid looks very very close. How do you see the race tomorrow?
FA: It will be a tough race. Always short circuits like this, where we run in 1m 13s/14s, always the times are very close, but tomorrow is a tough race like the others. I think, from the strategy point of view, it will be very interesting. Tyres will be interesting as well because yesterday no one ran on long runs with the tyres so tomorrow will be a little bit a surprise for all of us and we hope to have luck with us.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Fernando, how do you feel about that? Pole position here at Renault’s home Grand Prix?
FA: Any pole position feels great but to be here I think is very important for the team and me as well. I feel extremely happy but calm as well because the race is tomorrow.

Q: How do you feel about the lack of track time that you’ve had, having not had very much yesterday?
FA: Yeah, but that’s one important point for tomorrow’s race. No one ran with the tyres that long and tomorrow we will have a surprise in the teams because I don’t know how the tyres will behave, so this is one important point but anyway, we were lucky, we put the car on the track yesterday for a few laps and this morning and the car performed very well. We were competitive from the beginning and well, it’s a surprise to be on pole but it’s not a surprise to be in the top five or something like that because the car performed really well this weekend.

Q: I think you’ve got a new spec engine here, can you feel the difference in that?
FA: Well, we have a little more revs but that’s difficult to feel, but any help they can give us is very appreciated by the drivers.