Fernando, very very close going into that last qualifying lap, you and Michael, same lap time on your first quick lap.
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, first lap I had a little mistake in the last sector and they told me on the radio that we were second, just behind Michael, really close time, so I thought well, maybe I lost the pole with this mistake but we had a second chance with the second set of tyres and I did a normal lap with no mistakes and it's true: four times consecutively on pole which is a fantastic moment for us.

Kimi, quickest on sectors two and three, not so quick on sector one.
Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, we're losing a bit on the high speed, in a straight line. Maybe we have more downforce. But the car is quite good, it's as good as it can be really so I was pretty happy with my second lap and I couldn't really… OK, always maybe you can go a little bit quicker, but I was very happy with the car and it was good for us to get a little better result in qualifying.

Michael, after a difficult Monaco, great to come back here with a strong qualifying performance at Silverstone.
Michael Schumacher: Well, I'm not so sure it's so strong. We would have expected to be a bit closer in lap times, but then you have to consider the fuel level. We will see tomorrow what the situation is on that.

Bridgestone and Michelin seem to be relatively evenly matched here, but very difficult conditions, track conditions in terms of grip level and of course the wind changes.
MS: We haven't been here testing so we don't know what it was like at the test but according to the lap times they were doing at the test, something is different here, it's significantly slower. Nevertheless, it's the same conditions for everybody. It is a little bit tricky to adapt the car to the circumstances, no doubt. It was very tricky yesterday, today we managed reasonably. We will have to see what it means for tomorrow.

Fernando, it is close between the two tyre companies. How do you see the race panning out?
FA: It will be interesting to see the long runs. I don't think anyone has done more than a five or six lap run this weekend, so tomorrow will be a question of which tyre will be the more consistent in the race. We have full confidence in our tyre. We have a great strategy in our hands at the moment and I think that thanks to this pole position, things become easier but tomorrow it will be interesting to watch the race for sure.

Press Conference

Fernando, some handling problems yesterday, how was it today?
FA: Quite similar, to be honest. I think the track conditions are really difficult for everybody and we still didn't have a perfect balance this morning, lacking grip in the high speed corners and in qualifying everything became a little bit easy. We did some set-up changes that for sure helped the car, but also track conditions were a little bit better in qualifying with more rubber down and a little more grip, more temperature and I think all these factors improved the car balance.

And less wind?
FA: No. I think even more in qualifying to be honest, but we did some set-up changes also, to avoid the snaps and the inconsistency in the high speed corners we had in the morning, and everything worked perfectly again and I'm happy to be on pole again.

In Q1, you had a substantial margin, 0.6s over the rest of the field, but then it came down a bit.
FA: Yeah, I think we have to see what the fuel load is for tomorrow's race, but I was P1 in Q1, P1 in Q2 and Q3 so I'm really happy that it's not a fuel factor to be on pole position. I think we were quick in all three qualifyings so it means that the car is ready for tomorrow.

Looking around you, with Kimi alongside you and Michael behind you, this is a fairly crucial pole. They all are, of course, but…
FA: Yeah, every pole position is more and more important. We know how difficult it is to overtake these days in Formula One so pole position is twenty percent of the race, probably and we did it, but for sure, we have our main opponents very close to us so tomorrow we will have a very difficult race in front of us but hopefully we can keep first position until the end.

Kimi, have you found yourself a bit short of time after yesterday or have you caught up?
KR: I think the car is as good as it could be. It was unhelpful what happened yesterday but it didn't really change anything for today. Anyway, we tried something different yesterday from testing and it wasn't very good so we went back to normal settings and it seems to be quite good here, surprisingly good so I was very happy with qualifying.

Most people have had a spin or something; you had one right at the end of the morning session today.
KR: Yeah, it was my mistake. I just dropped a wheel under braking and lost the rear but it hasn't happened for a long time, so it doesn't matter.

It was very tight for you to get out to do that last lap in qualifying…
KR: Yeah, we were a little bit late. I needed to go full speed on the out lap which didn't help with the tyres but the tyres were still very good at the end of the lap so I don't think it made any difference. But it was a bit disappointing to be only one tenth or something behind first place. But second place is very good for us.