Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren-Mercedes (Team Principal):
“You won't be surprised to hear me saying that today was a very disappointing day for all at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. But, if I may start by stressing the positives, both today and yesterday our car has shown itself to be both fast and stable at this most testing of circuits, and as a result Jenson was extremely quick yesterday and Lewis extremely quick today. But, when it came to final qualifying this afternoon, by their own admission Jenson and his engineers didn't quite manage to find the 'sweet spot' in terms of set-up and tyre optimisation, and the result was P11 [P10 after Lewis's penalty]. Lewis, by contrast, hooked it up beautifully in Q3 today, continuing his run of scintillating quali-laps so far this season. However, he was unable to finish his slow-down lap – and, since we accept that the stewards didn't agree with our interpretation of force majeure, we didn't contest their decision to penalise him. Our aim is therefore now to maximise the points we can score tomorrow, and you may rest assured that both Jenson and Lewis will approach the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix with their customary combative ambition.”

Mark Gillan, Williams-Renault (Chief Operations Engineer):
“Pastor's qualifying performance was stunning today with a collection of very strong laps throughout the session which allowed us to save a set of soft tyres to fight for a decent qualifying position in Q3. To finish P2 is a great boost for the whole team and gives us a very good position from which to push hard in the race for decent points and hopefully a further belated 70th birthday present for Frank. It is obviously disappointing for Bruno to have crashed out of Q1 but we expect the race pace to be strong so points are still possible from P18.”

Stefano Domenicali, Ferrari (Team Principal):
“The session was very closely contested and packed with surprises. Finally this year, we managed to get to Q3 in a condition that meant we could show our worth, at least with one of the drivers. Fernando did a fantastic job from the first to the final lap of the session, constantly improving and, once again, getting all the potential out of the car. Felipe fought hard, but on his lap with new Soft tyres in Q2, he had a lot of traffic and lost a few tenths that would have brought him close to tenth place. We had a lot of new parts on the F2012 and the aim was to make up at least part of the gap to the best in terms of pure performance. We have made a step forward, this is a fact. Tomorrow's race seems very hard to predict and tyre performance will make the difference. The weather could also play an important role, given we have already seen that a few degrees more or less can change the cards on the table.”

Pat Fry, Ferrari (Technical Director):
“A good result with Fernando, who managed to qualify third, the best performance of the season. A shame for Felipe, who suffered because of traffic on his quick lap in Q2: right now, I cannot say if he would have made the cut out of Q2, but it definitely cost him some places. We brought various updates here, especially aerodynamic ones: some worked well, meeting our expectations, others less so: looking at this afternoon's result we can say we have made a step forward, but it's clear that there is still a lot of work to do to always be at the same level as the best. However, third place is a confidence boost and it is down to everyone who, these past weeks, back home and at the track, has worked hard to reach this objective. Now we must confirm this progress in the race as well. The forecast is for slightly lower temperatures tomorrow and that could have an effect on tyre behaviour. We have seen various choices in terms of tyre management: now we will see who made the right choice.”

Alan Permane, Lotus-Renault (Trackside Operations Director):
“Today went relatively smoothly for us. In Q3 I think we could have had a little bit more from both drivers' laps. For Romain in particular – after missing this morning's practice – it was an exceptional effort. Having the hard and soft tyres as opposed to two compounds which sit alongside each other (the medium and soft used in Bahrain for example) meant we had to approach qualifying differently as we all needed the softer tyre to progress through Q1, limiting the number of soft tyres available for the next two sessions. We saw different approaches to this; we'll have to see in the race whose was correct. Our long run pace yesterday looked good so we can be reasonably confident heading into the race. Our target for today was to get both cars into the top six; we've got both in the top five so let's try and exceed expectations once again tomorrow.”

Monisha Kaltenborn, Sauber-Ferrari (CEO):
“We are very happy with this result. After the Mugello test, which was quite encouraging, we hoped we would be able to get both cars into Q3, and it's good to see that this worked out. P6 is a great result for Sergio. We are sorry for Kamui who had to stop after Q2 due to an hydraulic leak, but I'm very optimistic for the race.”

Giampaolo Dall'Ara, Sauber-Ferrari (Head of Track Engineering):
“We are quite pleased with the outcome of qualifying. From an engineering point of view it was very positive that the good results from the Mugello test were confirmed on this track. Both drivers did a very good job, driving fast and consistent. It's a shame we had an hydraulic leak on Kamui's car. We decided that he should stop the car immediately in order not to do more damage. Now the important part comes tomorrow, and I'm confident we can achieve a very good result in the race.”

Bob Bell, Mercedes (Technical Director):
“We completed useful race preparation work this morning, showed some improvement and went into qualifying expecting an interesting session due to the desire to save tyres for the race. The story of qualifying indeed turned out to be one of managing tyre use, and it certainly delivered a unique session. From a team perspective, we got two cars into the top ten and both drivers will start from the cleaner side of the grid, while our positions were probably as good as we could have achieved with the way we chose to use the tyres. Tomorrow's forecast is still for cooler temperatures, and with what we have seen both this weekend and this season so far, we know that a difference of several degrees in track temperature can make a huge difference to how different cars perform. We can expect a very interesting race.”

Norbert Haug, Mercedes (Daimler):
“A qualifying dominated by tyre saving which most of the teams did and we were no exception. Some sessions are tight, like Q2 when 0.048s separated P5 from P10, others are not, as Lewis' impressive qualifying time more than half a second ahead of P2 proved. Having said that, it is most likely that we will see changes in the top ten order from today at the end of the race tomorrow. Our target will be to score points with both cars posting consistent lap times as Nico did during his long run at the end of the final practice session this morning.”

Christian Horner, Red Bull-Renault (Team Principal):
“A difficult session, obviously everyone ended up having to use the soft tyre in Q1. In Q2 we thought we had done enough with Mark, we knew it was going to be tight, but we thought the time was enough and were keen to take a new set of tryes into Q3, but it didn't work out and we missed the cut with him. We knew we had to run again with Seb and he did just enough to make it into Q3, but he'd used all his sets of soft tyres, at which point it became a game of tactics. Mercedes were in the same position as us with tyres and were the only one we could potentially out qualify. We performed an out and in-lap to make sure we were the first to do that and then started a timed, but Seb was down compared to Rosberg – the the only other scrubbed tyre user – so we aborted the lap and will start in P8. We have four new sets of tyres for Mark and three for Sebastian, which can be extremely valuable in the race.”

Cyril Dumont, Red Bull-Renault (Renault Engineer):
“It was disappointing today. With Mark, we thought he didn't need to run again in Q2, but unfortunately his time was not enough – we should have gone out again, which prevented him from going to Q3. With Seb, we used all the new soft tyres in Q1 and Q2, so we only had scrubs left for Q3, which was not ideal. We decided to do an out and in-lap, so we can change the tyres for tomorrow.”

Robert Fernley, Force India-Mercedes (Deputy Team Principal):
“The team has done an excellent job over the last few weeks to push through our upgrade package and get it on the car this weekend. But it's still early days and I'm sure that over the coming races we can fine-tune things further and extract even more performance. With than in mind I think we can take encouragement from our qualifying showing today with both Nico and Paul just a couple of tenths shy of squeezing through to Q3. We've been pleased with our tyre wear and the performance over long runs suggests we are in good shape for a competitive race tomorrow.”

Laurent Mekies, Toro Rosso-Ferrari (Chief Engineer):
“It is clear from today's classification that, even if we were able to make improvements to our car overnight, it was enough to be up with the quickest guys. It's true that it is very tight in this part of the grid, but we were not able to get into Q3 and we can expect an equally tight fight in the midfield in tomorrow's race. The pace of development is very high for everyone so we now need to push even harder to catch up. As far as the race is concerned, we have managed to produce something even from lower down the grid, so hopefully we can pick up a bit of pace and deliver a good performance.”

Mark Smith, Caterham-Renault (Technical Director):
“I think we probably got close to extracting as much performance out of the cars as we could this afternoon. Both drivers may have been able to find a couple more tenths but I am pleased with the performances they put in and now the focus moves to tomorrow's race. Tyres will be the defining factor in the race. We have already shown that we can fight with several cars ahead on Sundays and I think that careful management of the tyres and good pitstop strategy should give us a chance of putting in a good performance.”

John Booth, Marussia-Cosworth (Team Principal):
“We approached Free Practice 3 this morning somewhat hesitantly. For the last two race weekends we have found, on Timo's car in particular, that a good balance on Friday has somehow translated into a car that is not behaving as it should have done for the rest of the weekend. A lot of analysis has taken place over the past week - and at the Mugello test prior to that - and some new parts that we brought to both cars seem to have solved these problems. Timo reported a much improved balance on the car today, even with respect to Friday. Given this, our confidence built in FP3 but was then knocked slightly by a mechanical issue on Timo's car at the end of the session. We quickly diagnosed the fault on what was a new part and were able to apply a fix to both cars in readiness for qualifying. Unfortunately for Timo, he never really found his rhythm in the qualifying session, so I'm sure there's a lot more to come from him tomorrow. Charles on the other hand performed brilliantly, as was the case last week, and he is certainly exceeding all the expectations that we had of him for this stage of his debut season. The guys in front still have a little margin on us if we put our best laps together, so tomorrow we will perhaps not be able to enjoy the fight we had hoped for. However, by setting the clear goal of trying to be as close to them as we possibly can, we will at least be able to learn more about where our car development needs to go from here.”

Toni Cuquerella, HRT-Cosworth (Technical Director):
“We had mixed fortunes today. Pedro was able to continue with his programme and we were able to confirm that everything works fine and, as anticipated, the upgrades gave us an improvement. But we can't stop, we have to continue progressing. For qualifying, the car's balance improved a little bit more and Pedro completed two very good laps. With Narain the target in the practice session was to do as much mileage as possible and he did a fantastic job, but we weren't lucky in qualifying as he spun on the first set of tyres and wasn't able to set a good time, and when he was about to go out with the second set we had to abort as there was a problem with the fitting of the on-board camera which made it dangerous to go back out. He wasn't able to get in the 107% but I'm confident that, given the performance he showed this morning, there won't be any trouble for him to sta rt tomorrow's race.”

Paul Hembery, Pirelli (Motorsport Director):
“Strategy was at the forefront of qualifying today, with a gap of around 0.8 seconds between the hard and the soft tyres, depending on the team. Historically, Barcelona is a race that has nearly always been won from the front row of the grid, but now drivers that have qualified lower down the grid still have a possibility to challenge for victory. There were some surprising eliminations in Q2; however these drivers will feel the benefit of having more fresh tyres, so it will be interesting to see what they can do with them. As Barcelona is so demanding on every aspect of the dynamics of a car, including tyre management, it is normally a very good indicator of the likely form for the rest of the year. With the teams so closely matched this season, and the upgrades introduced at Mugello beginning to take effect, it's going to be very hard to predict a winner for tomorrow. Particular congratulations to Pastor Maldonado and Williams – who have consistently got the most out of the tyres throughout the weekend so far.”