Lewis, it's the first pole since Barcelona since Barcelona back in May. It's been quite a journey since then to get to this point. How do you feel?
Lewis Hamilton: I feel excited for tomorrow. I'm very proud of my guys. My guys on the side of the garage have also been through the difficult time with me and they've done a remarkable job in terms of every time bouncing back and fixing the car and dealing with the difficulties so we've done this as a team and it's great to have another one-two for the team and I'm really proud that I can be up there for them.

Well done. Nico, you were up by a tenth-and-a-half at the end of the first sector on that final run, but then it got away from you. What happened?
Nico Rosberg: A tenth-and-a-half relative to Lewis?

Yes, Lewis' benchmark, which he did on his first lap [in Q3].
NR: Yeah, but we're always going to be quicker in some parts and slower in some other parts, so relative to my own [first] lap it was an OK lap, so from that point of view second place is still a good position for tomorrow. It's a long race you know, everything can happen and so just need to now work towards the race and try to get a good start and have a good race. Anyways, also, I mean, definitely the team again. It's so great. Even on a track like Monza, where it's such a different track to all the others and even coming here, still we're so dominant and that's great to see. Of course it's only qualifying and the race remains to be seen but it's really awesome. The team is doing a fantastic job.

Coming to you Valtteri. Your third top three qualifying in the last four races. Particularly strong long runs yesterday in free practice. Does that suggest that you can challenge these gentlemen for the victory tomorrow?
Valtteri Bottas: I really hope so. From Friday to today they seem to have a bit more pace. In qualifying we expected that maybe we could be a little bit closer to them today but yeah, I really hope so. I think we have solid race pace and it just depends how much more pace they have left than on Friday.

OK, thank you very much. Coming back to you Lewis. Obviously the margins are always pretty fine around here. How do you feel about the race tomorrow? You've got some points, clearly, you need to make up, any suggestion of team orders or are you free to race?
LH: Free to race. That was the decision last week, so it continues as usual. I hope that tomorrow... it would be really good to get another one-two for the team. I think they're working extremely hard. I hope that we also have some competition from these guys [Williams]; I think that would be really great for the fans. As for me, I feel, I feel... I'm looking forward to it.

Press Conference

Lewis, I guess the key really is to put a complete race weekend together, that's what you've been looking for, for some time. Did you feel, coming into this weekend, and do you feel again now, that this would be that weekend that would give you that momentum back.
LH: Well to be honest, for probably at least seven races I've always gone into the weekend thinking that it could be a clean weekend. We saw the issue that we had yesterday and, again Nico had a problem today. It's definitely an area that we're focussing on to try and improve as a team but, y'know, I'm grateful to have got through qualifying today. It was kind of a very clean qualifying session for me, for once. And so, yeah, it's a great feeling to be up here.

Nico, Lewis mentioned there the problem that you had this morning with the electronics on the gearbox which meant that you didn't really do any meaningful running. Where you able to bounce back today? Do you blame what happened here today on that loss of time this morning and the preparation of things like the braking points and that precision that's needed for a lap around here?
NR: To be honest, straight in the first run in qualifying I had a good feeling and the car was better than yesterday in many areas. Adapted the setup overnight and worked on it so actually I got straight into it. I was happy about that feeling because I was expecting it to be a bit more complicated but that was good, definitely. So, from that point of view, qualifying was OK.

Valtteri, when you talk to engineers here, they all say it's incredibly difficult for a driver to get all four of those big brakings around this circuit absolutely perfect. How close did you get to that today and how do you feel about it?
VB: Pretty close! There are many braking zones that are quite bumpy here and with the low downforce and coming in at really high speed it's not easy - but today managed to hit them quite well, the correct braking points, and lap by lap the lap times were really consistent so I really felt today there was not much more in the car - so we definitely have some work to do.