Mark, congratulations, your first pole of the year.
Mark Webber: Yeah, OK, well Monaco was by default but yeah, the first one of track I suppose, nip and tuck with Fernando in Silverstone so, as most qualifying sessions this year have been tight and, yeah, very, very happy to get the job done today, get the pole position. It was as reasonable lap and we did it when it counted obviously. So that’s what qualifying’s all about, it’s been a tricky last few events for me but really happy to start on pole. Tomorrow’s the main day and we’re in a good position to get a good result.

Red Bull have been looking so good last weekend but also this weekend all the way through - what’s been the secret?
MW: Well, I think off the back of Suzuka we felt that we’d improved the car a bit but you never, ever get ahead of yourself these days. We had a good car in Valencia and then after that it was not that easy for us. We were a bit open to that after Suzuka, coming here knowing that it’s not going to be a given, but we have a pretty handy car around here for sure, and I think that the guys have been working very, very hard and there’s no question, the hard work’s paying off but we focus on ourselves and just keep pushing the lap times down as much as we can - and it’s lucky we do because obviously the gap is not that big to Lewis.

Sebastian, what happened on that last lap? You mentioned Massa.
Sebastian Vettel: Overall I think we can be very happy with the result obviously. We were quite quick in the first qualifying session, quite quick in the second one and then had a good start to Q3. But the last run, I don’t want to blame it on Felipe, I thought he was coming in but then on the last sector he was right in front of me so I had to back-off. Not ideal, just starting a timed lap, and just before that to back off but I think nevertheless the second lap wasn’t good enough. Lost a little bit today in the middle sector, which seemed to be OK all weekend but yeah, when the circuit ramped up I wasn’t able to go with it. Lost a little bit but I think second is a very good position to start from. Obviously around here you never know - you have a long straight, straight away after the start, so it could be interesting tomorrow.

And third on the grid Lewis, first time you’ve started third, what can you do about these two guys ahead of you?
Lewis Hamilton: I think it will be very tough to get ahead of them but we’ve put ourselves in as good a position as we could. It was very tough this weekend, these guys have clearly made quite a big step within the last two races and so we’ve just got to keep pushing. We’re not far off and the race pace for Jenson looked quite good yesterday. I’m just happy I got a clear lap and was able to put it as high up as possible.

Press Conference

Mark, well done, how did you feel about the lap?
MW: Pretty good. We had a few plates spinning, to be honest, with some little background issues that we were managing as best we could on the lap but the lap was very good, apart from Turn 15, I made a mistake there so, yeah, probably got in OK but the exit wasn’t great but apart from that it worked well. I think I got 11 and 12 as good as I could get. So, yeah, take the rough with the smooth. I think it was a tight session, I think, for all of us: up and down; scrubbed tyres; new tyres. Fernando did a pretty solid laptime on the scrubbed at some point there. So, yeah, that’s just the way it is. With the old Pirellis, things can move around quite a bit.

After this morning’s problem, presumably you went pretty blind into qualifying?
MW: Yeah, we didn’t get to run anywhere near as much as we would have liked to in P3, so our information on the option was limited. So there was a bit of catch-up going on for sure. After my first run on the option in Q2, I had not the best sector two and three for balance issues and also some other things that Ciaron was working on to get the car to finish the lap better - so that’s what we focussed on in Q3. And got the job done.

A little disappointment not to be on pole Sebastian? Although you’ll be pleased to hear that no-one’s every won from pole so far.
SV: Yeah, obviously I have good memories from last year with Lewis, when he was on pole. I think we’ll see tomorrow that it’s a long race. Surely the lap was fine but I should have been a little bit quicker, so yeah, wasn’t able in the end to do the final step, especially in the second sector. I think sector one and sector three were fine but yeah, got a little bit mixed-up second sector, so I think if you look at the laptimes in the end it was fairly close, so y’know, I think we’re happy with second and a front row for Red Bull Racing. Obviously the car seems to work well, I think in the race we might be even in a little bit better place. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.