Nick, second place at Monaco and now on pole for your home Grand Prix, a golden moment for you.
Nick Heidfeld: Yes, it’s fantastic. I thought after Monaco that it would be a bit more difficult for us here but luckily I was wrong. It went quite well this weekend. I had a bit of a problem yesterday on my car, I had to stop early which didn’t make the tyre choice easy for us. I thought we could be on the front row but I was surprised to see us on pole position. It’s fantastic, my first pole position in Formula One and my first pole position, obviously for a number of years now.

It looked a perfect lap from the outside; what was it like from your point of view?
NH: Yeah, I was satisfied with it. This morning I lost quite a lot of time, on my quickest lap I think I lost grip towards the end of the lap, so I changed my ‘out’ lap today a bit. I probably lost a bit on the first sector but overall I think it was good.

What does it mean to you now to be racing in front of your home crowd starting from the pole?
NH: Yeah, if you could chose a race where you want to have your first pole position I think this one would be it. It’s my home Grand Prix and it’s fantastic. The race is tomorrow, but obviously it’s the best position to start.

Do you feel pressure?
NH: You always have a lot of pressure. I try not to let that get too close to me and I don’t think I will have any problems with it.

Kimi, a new look qualifying session here for the Grand Prix of Europe, your thoughts on that and obviously qualifying second to Nick.
Kimi Raikkonen: Everything is working reasonably well. The car has been very good all weekend and of course it’s slightly different now. Before everybody was on light fuel so we knew exactly if we were quick or not but now you don’t really know what the other teams are doing. We have a good race car and we should be in a strong position to start from second place. As long as we get a good start I don’t see any reason why we should not be able to fight for a win. I’m quite happy how things went. Of course I would rather have been on first place but today we couldn’t do it, so let’s see when the others are stopping in the race.

Well coming off two wins in a row, a hat-trick facing you here now on another sort of circuit but again, the package looks very competitive.
KR: Yeah, everything is working well. I think we had a good tyre working well for one lap and it’s also consistent, so I’m not too worried. OK, it’s hard to say what the other teams… there might be someone behind us who is much heavier or lighter. You never know, it’s a bit confusing again now, because nobody knows before when people are stopping in the race, but I’m pretty happy and I think we have a good car for the race.

And we’ve had very hot weather too, 30 degree ambient, 50 degree track temperature today. Your thoughts on that?
KR: Yeah, I think the circuit was not as quick as it was in the morning, but that is quite normal these days. Quite often it’s a bit different from the last practice to qualifying so it’s just guessing a bit and trying to get everything exactly right for qualifying, but I was happy enough with the car. We will see how it is tomorrow. They are expecting a little bit cooler weather tomorrow.

Mark, it looked as if you didn’t quite get all your work done this morning, the chequered flag beat you to it but a good qualifying run nonetheless.
Mark Webber: Yeah, we missed the last lap to do our qualifying check on the tyres. We only got the first sector in and then of course we had to come in. Very happy with qualifying, the lap was pretty good and like Kimi says, you don’t know what strategy people are on. Of course I know what strategy we are on as a team, but against the other guys, it’s always tricky now. BMW Williams have done a good job this weekend. We came back from Monaco, here we are on a different circuit again, doing quite a good job actually, so looking forward to the race.

Quite a short run down into the first corner there, you’re behind Nick of course. What’s it going to be like off the line there in terms of grip either side of the track?
MW: I don’t actually know, is pole on the left or on the right? Anyway, if it’s on the left then I hope I’m on the clean side, or the better side wasn’t too destroyed when Kimi got me, so he is on that side so I’m sure. Well, the McLaren is not too bad getting away, so if we can get away well and come out of the first corner in third place then we should be okay.

And your thoughts too, on the conditions this weekend. It’s been incredibly hot so far.
MW: Yeah, not as hot as it… cooler than like what I feel actually. The ambient is quite hot, but I don’t feel the heat that much. But it’s a lot hotter than normal for this part of the world when we come here and race. It has been hard for the tyre companies, I think, to bring a tyre here which has quite a big window which it has to work in. In terms of ambients, normally we can be faced with 15 or 20 degrees ambient here, now we have 30 as you say, so it’s been quite hard for the tyre companies to get that right this weekend and we will see in the Grand Prix tomorrow, it will be a bit cooler but it’s still going to be a tough race for the tyres.

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