Sebastian: a fantastic performance and another pole position, your 11th of the season. How was it from where you were sitting?
Sebastian Vettel: The circuit ramped up in the end a little bit. I think it was possible to go faster but, all in all, a perfect session and I am very happy, especially around here as it is a fun track. A big challenge. It is very difficult. So many corners. Such a long lap to get everything together, but I think we learned especially from the mistakes we did last year in qualifying and kept our heads cool and did it today. It is great. We have both cars on the front row. Let's see tomorrow. It is a very, very long race.
Mark, almost a grandstand finish from yourself. You were within touching distance of Seb for two-thirds of your final qualifying lap so is this smiles for a front-row start or a frown for a pole that got away.
Mark Webber: No, I think I am pretty happy to be honest. It has been a pretty testing venue for me in the past, particularly on Saturdays. In the races I normally go a bit better around here. Seb obviously laid it down pretty hard and fast for all of us. He is very quick around here and did a great job for the pole. I think it is pretty rare that he makes a mistake. I think maybe he saw my data and there were a few corners I was a little bit quicker and maybe in the chicane he was trying to put it altogether and get it altogether. But he was very quick for the whole lap. To put it altogether for the whole lap is very challenging for all of us here. It is very easy to grab a bit more and then lose a bit on the next straight so overall satisfied given the curve balls the teams can face around here. Both cars up there is a great result for us.
Jenson, you hooked it up enough by five one-thousands-of-a-second to leapfrog Lewis Hamilton. He sat in the garage while you were out doing a final qualifying run. He saved a set of tyres. You start ahead of him. What's more important?
Jenson Button: I don't know really. I haven't really thought about it. All I know is that for me the lap was good. Both my laps. If I had put both of them together it would have been good but it is very difficult around here as you struggle to get all three sectors together because either the tyres aren't warm enough at the start of the lap or they are overheating at the end. Or maybe that is just our problem. It is very, very tricky and something I have been fighting all day. Obviously I didn't get much running yesterday after facing a barrier at the end of the session yesterday, so I am pleased to be in the top three. It is a good position for the race tomorrow but it is also something I have no experience of, as I didn't do any high-fuel running, so it is going to be a challenge.
Sebastian, that is 11 pole positions this season so far. Nigel Mansell has the record with 14 in a season. Are you thinking about beating that record yet?
SV: No, I think it was pretty exceptional. I think it was 1992 Nigel had that incredible year. We are not doing too bad this year, but I think it is wrong to start thinking about those things. We have got a long race ahead of us tomorrow. That's where we usually score points, not in qualifying, so the focus is on the race tomorrow. But I think it shows that really every single race is another step for us and we try to focus on the moment. I think it is the most important. To get all out every single time sounds easy. We have to keep on doing what we are doing, but it is not so easy to do it every weekend. As I said tomorrow is the race and that's where the focus is. I still believe that Nigel's record is exceptional.
Press Conference
Sebastian, tell us about the lap and the satisfaction of being on pole here. I can imagine this is almost more satisfaction than any other circuit.
SV: Yeah, it is in a way. I think it is an exceptional track for us. Either you like it or you hate it. I think the secret is maybe a bit of both. It is a very long track. A lot of corners. Just 23 corners as a number is already incredible compared to some tracks. The last race we had 11, so it is double the amount of corners and it's a long lap. The speed is fairly low which is what you expect on a street circuit. Stop and go really but it is so difficult, so challenging to put it altogether as every single corner you try to get the best out of the car, out of the tyres and then it is give and take. You try to take a little bit more out of the car and then and then you have to sacrifice for the next corner for maybe the next straight and so on so a lot of thinking going on and difficult if you really operate the car on the limit to get it close to 100 per cent every corner. It really matches with the next corner and the next corner. That's why I think the satisfaction generally you get when you cross the line here is big, when you know it has been a good lap and the other way around if it wasn't and you give yourself quite some grief. You know that you could have done so much better as it is so easy to lose time and not just a couple of hundredths. It is immediately within a couple of tenths that you lose so it's a nice challenge.
And then you have got to do 61 laps of it tomorrow?
SV: Yes, it is going to be long. The race is always around two hours here. It is the longest we have, so on top of it they switch off the lights, as the sun is down. Switch on the lights of course. It is a night race, very humid and I think we all lose quite a lot of water. A lot of sweating and it will be a difficult one.
You said yesterday that you needed a good step overnight. So how much was done and how much did you have to change?
SV: Well, the target is always to improve the car overnight. I was fairly happy with the car yesterday and we didn't do that much. I think the steps we did were a step forward. Not massive but probably what we needed to keep that cushion, so all in all I was very happy on the prime tyre and the soft tyre as well. This morning was a bit scrappy as I had a lot of traffic and didn't get the lap together but this afternoon the first run on option was a confirmation that also on the super soft tyres we can do it so reasonably confident for tomorrow. As I said it is going to be a long race and it is not just about speed, it is also about control, managing the tyres. At this stage I think it is a bit unclear what is the fastest way but we will find out tomorrow.
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