German Grand Prix – Qualifying: P4

| Source: autosport.com | lotusf1team.com |

Pos Driver                Team                 Time       Gap       
 1.  Lewis Hamilton       Mercedes             1m29.398s
 2.  Sebastian Vettel     Red Bull-Renault     1m29.501s  +0.103s
 3.  Mark Webber          Red Bull-Renault     1m29.608s  +0.210s
 4.  Kimi Raikkonen       Lotus-Renault        1m29.892s  +0.494s
 5.  Romain Grosjean      Lotus-Renault        1m29.959s  +0.561s
 6.  Daniel Ricciardo     Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m30.528s  +1.130s
 7.  Felipe Massa         Ferrari              1m31.126s  +1.728s
 8.  Fernando Alonso      Ferrari              1m31.209s  +1.811s
 9.  Jenson Button        McLaren-Mercedes     No time set
10.  Nico Hulkenberg      Sauber-Ferrari       No time set
Q2 cut-off time: 1m30.269s                             Gap ** 
11.  Nico Rosberg         Mercedes              1m30.326s  +0.501s
12.  Paul di Resta        Force India-Mercedes  1m30.697s  +0.872s
13.  Sergio Perez         McLaren-Mercedes      1m30.933s  +1.108s
14.  Esteban Gutierrez    Sauber-Ferrari        1m31.010s  +1.185s
15.  Adrian Sutil         Force India-Mercedes  1m31.010s  +1.185s
16.  Jean-Eric Vergne     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m31.104s  +1.279s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m31.681s                              Gap * 
17.  Valtteri Bottas      Williams-Renault      1m31.693s  +1.146s
18.  Pastor Maldonado     Williams-Renault      1m31.707s  +1.160s
19.  Charles Pic          Caterham-Renault      1m32.937s  +2.390s
20.  Jules Bianchi        Marussia-Cosworth     1m33.063s  +2.516s
21.  Giedo van der Garde  Caterham-Renault      1m33.734s  +3.187s
22.  Max Chilton          Marussia-Cosworth     1m34.098s  +3.551s

Lotus Team Quotes:

Kimi Raikkonen – 4th: “My car was OK today, but in my Q3 lap on the new tyres I struggled to get the fronts up to temperature which meant I lost quite a bit of time in the first sector; probably because there was traffic on my out lap meaning I couldn’t push as much as I wanted. For sure it didn’t help and we probably should have been P3 today, but P4 is still a pretty good place to be for the race.”

Romain Grosjean – 5th: “P5 is a pretty good result, but to be honest I’m a little disappointed with my fastest lap as there were definitely a few tenths lost in the first sector. We struggled a little getting the front tyres working this morning but the car felt really good during qualifying and we improved with every lap. It was a strong performance for the team with Kimi P4 as well, so we’re happy to be back at the front after paying a few unwanted visits to the lower positions recently.”

Alan Permane, trackside operations director: “We’re reasonably happy with today’s performance. Of course, you always want more and we could have got a little more from both cars in the final qualifying session as neither driver posted a good first sector. That said, with P4 and P5 on the grid, we’re happy. We know that our race simulations yesterday looked good and the forecast is for high temperatures tomorrow, so I think we can look forward to having a strong race. The new rear construction with the Kevlar belt doesn’t appear to be hurting our performance and we’re as competitive as we thought we’d be here so we’ve no worries on that front. The medium compound looks to be the favoured one for the race as the soft has a reasonably high performance degradation; such that we have seen Ferrari opt to start on the medium compound as their approach to managing it. It will be interesting to see how that approach works; from our side, we’re pretty happy with starting on the soft.”