Italian GP: Qualifying notes - Mercedes

08/09/2012

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg qualified in fifth and seventh places today for the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. The pair will start from fourth and sixth positions on the grid tomorrow once other penalties have been applied. Michael and Nico both used a single set of prime tyres in Q1, and one set of options in each of Q2 and Q3. Five Mercedes-Benz engines were among the top seven fastest times set in qualifying this afternoon.

Michael Schumacher: I think we can be satisfied with our qualifying performance as we have performed consistently all weekend. Our car clearly suits this circuit more than at the last races, but we've had a couple of hiccups along the way in practice. Our guys back at the factory and here at the track did a good job to sort out the problems and compliments to them. Solid points should be a realistic target for tomorrow. The fact that I will start from fourth is another small positive point, because here the even numbers on the grid are probably the better start positions.

Nico Rosberg: Starting from sixth place here in Monza is a decent result from a tricky qualifying session today. I wasn't happy with the balance of my car by Q3 and, although it started well, I then lost the right balance so I couldn't improve my time. I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow and I hope we can gain some positions.

Ross Brawn: It was a pretty solid qualifying session for the team this afternoon. The key to the session was using the tyres in the correct way and getting them at their best for the timed laps. We could perhaps have squeezed a little more out of our package today in terms of pure performance, but our positions are close to our maximum at this circuit. Yesterday's race preparation was, for the first time in a number of races, untroubled by poor weather so we were able to achieve a lot of good work on various fuel loads. Now, we will see how that translates into tomorrow's race.

Norbert Haug: Fifth for Michael and seventh for Nico are better qualifying results than we had in the last two races and this should be a decent basis for the race tomorrow. Five Mercedes-powered cars in the top seven places of the qualifying ranking is a good result for our engine today.

Check out our Qualifying gallery, here.