Drivers quotes from Spa qualifying

"We’ve got more pace here than in Valencia. It was a stress to get into Q3, it was very tight as usual and all the drivers were pretty evenly matched so you had to find that extra few tenths to get into the final group.

We’ll see how tomorrow goes with the strategy, we’re in a reasonable position to mount an attack for some points. It’s good to see Alonso and me up there today, it’s encouraging for Renault and for our team, for everyone here and in Milton Keynes."

"We knew we would be struggling a bit today given these low temperatures and it was a difficult qualifying for us - this has been the trend of the weekend so far unfortunately.

It was very hard to get the temperature into the tyres in order to make them work properly so it is then not easy to judge the car balance. As well as that I am on the second race with my engine and that is particularly important here because you have the long straights.

Normally on the second race the engine loses a little bit of power and here this makes a difference to the lap time. But tomorrow is another day and I will do my best. The only positive point is that we can choose our strategy just before the race."

"It was quite a difficult session for me today. In practice we were struggling a bit to bring the tyres to the right temperature and we suffered from this again in qualifying. It was particularly hard to get the heat into the tyres on my first flying lap, so we were not able to get the result we wanted. We are not getting the performance out of the tyres in these conditions and it is difficult to get a feeling for the car when that happens.

It was really tricky to get it right today and it's hard to see it changing dramatically tomorrow; maybe the temperature rises a bit or it rains, you never know here. It would be good for me if it was wet because I like those conditions and our car performs well if there is a bit of rain.

We will have to wait and see but whatever happens we will push as hard as we can to achieve the best possible result."

"I’m not so happy with that. Fourteenth doesn’t look good, but it’s so tight in the mid field and we’re separated by such a small margin. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow."

"I didn’t really expect us to struggle so much in qualifying today. While we knew that Spa was not going to be our best track, being this far back is unexpected and very disappointing.

In one respect, my car was okay from a balance perspective, but there was a serious lack of grip which meant I couldn’t go any faster. Obviously looking ahead to the race tomorrow, some rain would give me a small chance to achieve something, otherwise it’s going to be very difficult."

"We have to be pleased with what we achieved in qualifying today, particularly given that we have been pretty much at the bottom of the timesheets so far this weekend.

It was a good lap and a good effort from the team. It's just a shame that the car is not able to be more competitive here."

"My first lap in qualifying was the first lap that I did today so in a way it was nice to be able to beat some of our competitors and be close to my team mate.

It was a decent session for us, at the level of performance which the car is showing this weekend, and we will at least be starting from the clean side of the grid. Rain tomorrow would make the race more interesting but unfortunately it's not looking likely."

"I felt our car was better in practice this morning despite the fact that the dry conditions for qualifying made the circuit better this afternoon, but when we got into the qualifying session, I just couldn’t find any grip and I am still not able to understand why. It’s going to be a long race tomorrow and starting 19th will make things more difficult."

Full results, videos and more on www.formula1.com

photos on automobilsport.com under PHOTOS - FORMULA1