Lewis, a tight fight with your team-mate. But following on from your win in Budapest I bet you are wishing the season started in July rather than in March?
Lewis Hamilton: That would have been fantastic, but it didn't. Here we are – a fantastic achievement from the team at the last race and then to come here not really knowing whether we would have the same pace or whether other people would have made a step forward. But clearly we have very good pace this weekend, myself and Heikki. And Heikki especially did a fantastic job through qualifying. It was very close between me and him. It was great to see us both there because I think for both of us we have been wanting a one-two qualifying experience for a long time. It is great to be here.

Heikki, you were on target for pole until that penultimate corner. Tell us about your pain.
Heikki Kovalainen: Well, I clearly went over the limit. In hindsight you can always argue and think you could have done it a bit better. But in qualifying you have to go for it. It was incredibly close. Had I not pushed to the absolute limit I could have dropped three or four places easily, so I went for it. It didn't work out this time but luckily I did not lose more than one place, so it is fine. It is absolutely a great place to start tomorrow. I think we have done a good improvement from Hungary on my side of the garage, so I think everybody can be very pleased in the garage and also back in Woking. We have been working very hard this week since the shut-down and fingers crossed it is paying off now.

Rubens, after the struggles of the last few grands prix what does this result today say about Brawn GP?
Rubens Barrichello: The same for us. Like the McLaren guys after the shut-down it has been a lot of work. The team had a fantastic approach to it. In order to go forwards we had to go backwards a little bit and calculate some of the stuff. Between myself and Jenson we have had a fantastic job on Friday to do back-to-backs on set-up and things and I think we learned something. It is hot as you can see. The track is good for us. It is good to be back competitive. I wish next year's rules were already in place as I was fastest in Q2, so you never know how much fuel these guys have. But I hope I have more than them.

Lewis, there was a lot of confidence about the way you attacked qualifying and saving a run in Q2. Is it the same confidence you take into tomorrow's grand prix?
LH: We haven't seen this for a long time. Last year and in 2007 there were times where we only had to do one run in qualifying. This year we have had to go in all guns blazing and use up every minute and every second of the qualifying session. But very fortunately I managed to do a couple of good laps, so I did not have to do too many. But it can always be improved, so for sure going into tomorrow we stand in the best position for myself and Heikki for a podium. But it all depends on strategy and how the start goes and how the rest of the race goes.

Press Conference

Lewis, only the fifth time this year that you've been in the top ten, so is this a reflection of how McLaren have bounced back?
LH: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that coming into the weekend we thought we'd be competitive but I don't think any of us really knew whether we'd be competing for the front row. It's a great result for us. The team has well deserved it. It's just great to know that we can continue with the momentum from the last race.

And you lost the whole session yesterday afternoon; how important was that?
LH: The time that you lose… every little bit of time that you get on the track makes a huge difference for everyone. You find out more about the car, you fine-tune the car even more. I missed the whole session, a good hour and fifteen/twenty minutes, so in terms of dialling in the car, I had a lot of pressure on me this morning, but fortunately we did quite a good job. It wasn't perfect but there are always still improvements that you can make. But I was quite comfortable with the car this morning, I think we'd had quite a productive P3 practice session and going into qualifying, it was nice to be able to do single laps and get those laps in.

Even this morning was cut short as well, but yesterday you were talking about having a loose rear end. Presumably you've sorted that out?
LH: Not fully, no. We still have a little bit of a loose rear end. Inevitably on my pole position lap it was OK, it was quite a good lap. The second lap was better but in a lot of places I lost chunks of time, so hopefully there should be a little bit more time in it and hopefully we will be able to extract that tomorrow.