2014 Italian GP qualifying - driver reaction
The 22 drivers have their say on the action at Monza
Saturday 6 September 2014 18:59, UK
The 22 drivers have their say on the action at Monza where Lewis Hamilton took pole position for Mercedes.
Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel: “I think realistically anything from P5 to P10 was maybe possible, but it was very close. It’s a shame when you miss a couple of positions by just a few tenths or so, but we knew it would be like that going into today.
“When the gaps are close you always think you could have gone quicker, but that was probably it in terms of what we could do today. We should be quicker than McLaren tomorrow, I’d say we’ll be about the same as Ferrari, while Williams and Mercedes will likely be a bit too quick for us, but we’ll look after ourselves and see what happens in the race.”
Daniel Ricciardo: “Even though we expected a tricky qualifying, I’m still disappointed. Ninth is not something to get really excited about. Seb’s in front, but he’s only in 8th as well and as a team we would have loved to have been a bit closer to the top five.
“We knew we wouldn’t challenge for the front two rows, but we thought that maybe sixth could be possible. Fingers crossed we’ve got better race pace tomorrow and we’ll try and do something with that.
Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton: “It's a great feeling to be on pole here at Monza and I'm really excited for the race tomorrow. It's also a relief to have had a clean qualifying session, my first for quite a while! Big thanks to my guys in the garage, I'm very proud of the way they've worked this year and dealt with all our ups and downs, they've done a great job.
“It's business as usual tomorrow, we're free to race and I hope we get a strong result for the team, hopefully a one-two. The other Mercedes-powered cars are looking strong here as well so it should be an exciting race. I'm looking forward to it.
Nico Rosberg: “Thank you to the boys, they did a great job making my car ready for Qualifying. Also, overnight we improved the set-up a lot with the engineering support from Brackley, therefore I felt a lot better in the car today compared to yesterday. Today Lewis was quicker, but starting from second place is still a very good position to win here at Monza.
“I will need a good start and good race pace, but I'm quite confident to get it all right tomorrow. So I'm very much looking forward to the race. Monza has always a great atmosphere and it's so great to drive this great track with our phenomenal Silver Arrow.”
Ferrari
Fernando Alonso: “We knew that, as usual in qualifying, it would be tough and that the encouraging signs we saw in free practice should not create false expectations. Unfortunately today, we could not have done better, because even though I was trying my hardest, we set very similar times with all four sets of tyres.
“Now, we must look ahead to the race, which will be a tough one and, given how small the gaps are, it could also be very interesting. Usually here, at the first chicane, there’s a lot of action and you need to be very careful if you want to be in the game.
“On top of that, it will be very important to manage the tyre degradation, given that the best strategy would seem to be a one-stop. Because of that it means doing a lot of laps on both compounds.”
