Christian Horner, Red Bull-Renault (Team Principal):
“A great team performance today and pretty unexpected to get pole and third on the grid here. It's testimony to all the hard work that's going on here trackside and back in the factory to deliver that kind of performance during what was a really exciting and tight qualifying session. Sebastian was nearly knocked out in Q1 and Q2 and then put it on pole in Q3, which shows how tight it was and Mark was there all the way through. Hopefully we can have a strong race tomorrow.”

Cyril Dumont, Red Bull-Renault (Renault Engineer):
“It's a good feeling to be at the top of the game after a few races where we were struggled a bit more, especially with our qualifying pace. The team is pushing hard to recover and understand the tyres more and it's starting to pay off. I'm happy for the team and everyone who is working so hard. To start first and third is the best position for tomorrow on the clean side of the track, so I hope that we will have the usual, good race pace to convert our qualifying from today.”

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren-Mercedes (Team Principal):
“As we've already got used to seeing this season, it was very tight at the top today. Even the early stages of qualifying – Q1 and Q2 – are nowadays extremely hard to get through. Michael [Schumacher] and Kimi [Räikkönen] can confirm that. As for our boys, well, Lewis drove an excellent lap, and missed out on pole position by just a tenth of a second. Jenson, too, was his usual rapid and reliable self, ending up in fourth place, directly behind Lewis on tomorrow's grid. The race will inevitably be a physically challenging one for all the drivers, as is always the case in hot climates such as Bahrain's, but we've got two tough racers in Lewis and Jenson and our intention is to go for the win.”

Ross Brawn, Mercedes (Team Principal):
“A session of mixed fortunes for the team this afternoon. In Q3, we made the strategic decision for Nico to do just one lap and, although his starting position is not optimum, he is the only driver in the top five to have a new set of option tyres available. This could prove valuable in the race, and we will learn tomorrow if our strategic decision pays off. Looking to Michael, he experienced a failure of the DRS rear wing flap, just before he entered the back straight on what would have been his quickest lap. This cost him around half a second, and with little more than a second separating the top 17 cars in Q1, that proved decisive. Unfortunately, we were unable to repair the system in time for him to run again, and he was bumped down to P18 at the very last moment. It will be a long and interesting race tomorrow, in demanding conditions, and we will look to make the most of our opportunities to achieve the strongest possible team result.”

Norbert Haug, Mercedes (Daimler):
“From the outset, our focus at this circuit, where tyre usage and availability of new tyres are crucial, was to be in a good position in that respect during the race on Sunday. We think this is even more important here than on the three circuits that we have already raced at this year. As a consequence, Nico completed just one run in Q3 in order to save a set of fresh options for tomorrow. We knew that this strategy would likely compromise his position on the grid. However, knowing that we will be well-placed tomorrow on the tyre front, I am convinced that this was the right thing to do. Last year, there were occasions when we were more than one and a half seconds behind pole position. Today, with one attempt compared to the two made by the teams ahead of us, we are behind pole by not quite four tenths. We are heading in the right direction, and our team is working in a focused and systematic way in order to achieve our targets. I feel sorry for Michael who had the pace for a good starting position, as he has proven with a fourth place and two third places in Q3 at the previous races. A problem with the rear wing mechanism prevented him from getting a good result - but he can achieve this tomorrow. Michael showed good pace during our long runs and he will be well equipped with fresh tyres. After our great result last weekend with Nico securing pole on Saturday and victory on Sunday, I am quite happy with our performance this weekend so far. Our team has demonstrated that we can be competitive in quite different circumstances. Well done Sebastian on your pole today.”

Laurent Mekies, Toro Rosso-Ferrari (Chief Engineer):
“The most positive aspect of today is that we seem to have understood the reasons why we were quite slow last week in China. We came here with a few possible solutions and it seems to have delivered reasonable results. Today, if you look at the qualifying times, we have mixed feelings: Daniel has secured a fantastic result after driving very well all weekend, making no mistakes. However, it did not go our way with Jean-Eric, but hopefully we can work together to deliver something better tomorrow, as he has already produced some good races from low down the grid. Daniel will have a very tough fight up there, but whatever happens, it was important to put last weekend behind us. Finally, a big thank you to everyone, here at the track, at the factory in Faenza and the wind tunnel in Bicester: we are coming to the end of a long and intense four race stint and it is good to see that all the hard work from everyone has delivered such a positive result today.”

Alan Permane, Lotus-Renault (Director of Trackside Operations):
“We're a little bit disappointed with our pace on the soft tyre and we need to assess where we lost out on speed as we didn't achieve what we thought would be possible with Romain in Q3. Kimi's pace was comparable to Romain's and with another set of tyres he could have gone through to Q3.Tomorrow will be all about tyre degradation, so we took the risk not to run Kimi a second time in the Q2 session in order to save tyres. Unfortunately, he was pipped out of the top ten at the last moment. We knew it was a risk not running him again, but the performance penalty of not making Q3 was is not as great as it could have been due to the benefits of the fresh tyres saved for the race.”

Giampaolo Dall'Ara, Sauber-Ferrari (Head of Track Engineering):
“The result is in the region we expected it to be before we came here. We were aware that it would be difficult to be as good as in China, but everything went okay today. We struggled a bit with the balance in the morning. This track is definitely not easy for us but then qualifying was fine and both drivers did a good job. Technically there were no problems. For the race the trick will be good tyre management without sacrificing too much pace. We are definitely in a position to fight for points.”

Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari (Team Principal):
“In all honesty, this result matches our expectations going into the session. Certainly we can't be happy about these positions, quite the contrary in fact: we are the first to be disappointed, but our potential today is what it is and now we must try and get the most out of it. Looking to a race in which tyre degradation will be a decisive factor, we came up with a programme aimed at saving as many new sets as possible, trying at the same time to get as far forward on the grid as we could. If and how well this choice will pay off, is something we will only find out tomorrow afternoon. The aim for this Grand Prix is damage limitation, which means bringing both cars home in the points. I expect it will be a very hard race, for the cars, the drivers and the teams: whoever manages to avoid making any mistakes will already have a fair chance of getting a good result.”

Pat Fry, Ferrari (Technical Director):
“Aware of our potential and the fact that tyre degradation can be expected to be very high over a long run, based on what we saw in yesterday's free practice, we ran this qualifying session in different ways for each driver, thinking more about the race than the result at the end of this afternoon. For Fernando, our priority was to save sets of new Medium tyres, sending him straight out on track on the Soft in Q1. It was a bit risky, but it worked. Fernando managed to get through to Q3, but had to also use the last set of Softs available, because the track was improving significantly with each passing minute. In the final part of the session, we chose not to do a timed lap, hoping to induce any of our rivals who might have been following the same strategy to do a time, which would at least have obliged them to then start the race with a set of used tyres. With Felipe on the other hand, we went for a more conventional strategy, while still letting him save a set of new Softs for tomorrow, when tyre management will be important. If one can manage to do as many laps as possible with a clear track ahead, it could allow you to make up some places: let's hope we can get both drivers in the top ten.”

Robert Fernley, Force India-Mercedes (Deputy Team Principal):
“I think the whole team has delivered an impressive performance today, which leaves us in a competitive position heading into the race. We worked hard at improving the car between final practice and qualifying, and I think the track conditions came to us as well. Paul's pace in Q2 shows the potential we have in the car and allowed him to reach Q3 for the first time this year, which was a tremendous effort. Nico was close to joining him too, but a small mistake cost him some time in the final part of the lap. We are now looking forward to the race and building on today's showing to help put on a great spectacle for Bahrain.”

Mark Gillan, Williams-Renault (Chief Operations Engineer):
“We have had a relatively tough day today with Pastor experiencing a KERs problem in qualifying which forced us to pit his car and take no further part in the session. This was particularly disappointing as Pastor felt that his car balance was good. Bruno continued to improve throughout qualifying, finishing in P15 in what is a tight grid. We now need to concentrate on tomorrow and hope to use our better race pace to potentially make our way up into the points.”

Thierry Salvi, Caterham-Renault (Renault Sport F1 Support Leader):
“Seeing Heikki in Q2 is a very good result for us and the whole team. We have been working on giving the drivers the right balance between top speed and traction out of the slower corners and today's result shows we have found the right setup for this track. The wind today, particularly on the main straight where there was a stronger head wind than yesterday, meant we had to fine tune the engine maps and our final positions in today's qualifying session is the reward for the work the whole team has done.”

Mark Smith, Caterham-Renault (Technical Director):
“We are all delighted with today's result. This morning we had a very good FP3 and the work we have done overnight has paid off with Heikki's result today. Everything on his car worked as we had planned and this is a clear sign that the whole team is making progress. Vitaly had a strong run on the first set of medium tyres but he just was not able to get the most out of the soft tyres on his second run, but he has already shown how strong he is on Sundays so we have good reason to be positive about his prospects here as well. We know we have a good package for the race tomorrow, so we'll look forward to what will definitely be an exciting Grand Prix and aim to maintain the sort of pace we have already shown in the first three races this season.”

John Booth, Marussia-Cosworth (Team Principal):
“A very good job from Charles today in somewhat challenging conditions, given the quite severe tyre degradation issues we have been seeing. His solid progress in the four race weekends so far has not gone unnoticed and rightly so, as he has been applying himself fantastically well. The track evolution here has been posing a few problems, but Charles seems to have had the measure of them all weekend and his experience of racing here previously in GP2 is obviously a contributing factor. During Timo's first run in qualifying we unfortunately experienced a fuel pick-up problem, which left him saddled with a significantly higher fuel load for his second run to overcome this. Timo then made a mistake at Turn 13, which was a real shame because he was going well before that. Unfortunately, a consequence of that has been that we will now have to start behind one of the HRT cars tomorrow, so Timo's first mission will be to displace them before he sets about the onerous task that both drivers will face in managing the tyres through the race. They each have an extra set of the Soft tyre in hand and we know our race pace is strong against the cars around us. It will be a tough race tomorrow, but certainly an interesting one.”

Toni Cuquerella, HRT-Cosworth (Technical Director):
“We've continued to progress adequately and, once again, surpassed the cut without any problems. To be more precise, this time we were in the 104.3% and much closer to our rivals. In the practice session we tried out different set-ups and the changes made worked well in qualifying so we can say we're satisfied. Tomorrow an exciting race awaits us because we expect to see between three and four stops per car since the degradation of the tyres is high. It will also be a challenge for the brakes and the cooling in long distance as conditions will be tough. Management of all these elements will be key.”

Paul Hembery, Pirelli (Motorsport Director):
“We've seen a great job from Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull, who demonstrated their ability to get the most out of the tyres by extracting every last bit of performance from the softer compound. With the whole field having closed up considerably in terms of pure pace this year, every single advantage that any driver finds is magnified – which means that tyre strategy becomes all the more important. That strategy also influences qualifying, with about 18-20 laps expected for the soft tyres in race conditions and 23-25 laps for the medium tyres. We can expect three stops for most of the leading runners, although some may try two depending on which compound they favour. Degradation is more or less where we expect it to be, given track temperatures in excess of 45 degrees centigrade. In terms of the speed differential between the tyres, we're still expecting 0.6-0.8 seconds between the two compounds or maybe a bit less. Tyre degradation is certainly going to be an important factor in the race tomorrow, but managing the tyres correctly presents another important opportunity for this extremely talented grid of drivers to demonstrate their skills.”