Turkish GP: Brawn GP qualifying report

Brawn GP's Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello qualified their Brawn-Mercedes cars in second and third positions today ahead of Sunday's 58-lap Turkish Grand Prix at the Istanbul Park Circuit.

After working hard overnight to make significant changes to the set-up of the cars, both Jenson and Rubens were happier with the balance which reflected in their running at the front for much of Q1 and Q2 as they fine-tuned their set-up and evaluated the tyre choices for the final qualifying session.

Q3 saw an intense battle at the front with Rubens switching to the prime tyre and completing one run of five laps, setting his best time on his final flying lap to take third position. Sticking to the softer option tyre, Jenson completed two runs to set provisional pole at the end of the session before being just edged out of the top spot by Sebastian Vettel.

JENSON BUTTON
"With the changes to the set-up that we made overnight, the car felt much better today and we were really able to get to grips with improving the pace. It's great to be starting on the front row, although of course I would prefer to be on pole, but Sebastian did a great job. It was quite difficult to choose between the tyres today as their performance was quite similar. The prime was a little too twitchy for my liking so I continued to run the option tyre for Q3 which had a more gradual and rolling feel. It should be a good race tomorrow as I really enjoy this circuit and you can overtake here so there will hopefully be some good battles out on the track. We will be trying very hard to change the statistic that everyone who has started from pole here has won the race!"

RUBENS BARRICHELLO
"The team has done a great job since the practice sessions yesterday to make improvements and the car felt immediately better this morning. Qualifying went really well although I did have a worrying moment in Q2 when traffic affected my second run and the times were so close between the top eleven drivers. The main question in qualifying today was trying to understand which tyre performed better. I had a better feeling through the high-speed corners with the prime tyre and it was the best choice for me so I went for just the one run on the primes in Q3. I lost my first two flying laps to traffic but the third lap was really good. I have the advantage of starting from the clean side tomorrow so will be aiming for a good start and take it from there."

ROSS BRAWN
"A real team performance today to turn around what was an uncharacteristically challenging Friday for us. A lot of hard work overnight from the drivers, engineers and technicians, both here and at the factory in Brackley, resolved the issues that we faced and gave us the pace to that we needed to compete at the front in qualifying. Jenson and Rubens had different preferences for the tyres today so we adopted two very different strategies for Q3, both of which paid off with top three grid positions. We know that the car performs well with fuel so that gives us confidence for the race tomorrow."

-credit: brawn gp