India Grand Prix – Qualifying Results

| Source: autosport.com | lotusf1team.com |

Pos Driver              Team          Time          Gap   
 1. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault     1m24.119s
 2. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes             1m24.871s  +0.752s
 3. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes             1m24.941s  +0.822s
 4. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault     1m25.047s  +0.928s
 5. Felipe Massa          Ferrari              1m25.201s  +1.082s
 6. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault        1m25.248s  +1.129s
 7. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari       1m25.334s  +1.215s
 8. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari              1m25.826s  +1.707s
 9. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes     1m26.153s  +2.034s
10. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes     1m26.487s  +2.368s
Q2 cut-off time: 1m25.458s                        Gap **
11. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m25.519s  +0.951s
12. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes 1m25.711s  +1.143s
13. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes 1m25.740s  +1.172s
14. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1m25.798s  +1.230s
15. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault     1m26.134s  +1.566s
16. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari       1m26.336s  +1.768s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m26.178s                        Gap *
17. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault        1m26.577s  +1.003s
18. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault     1m26.842s  +1.268s
19. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth    1m26.970s  +1.396s
20. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault     1m27.105s  +1.531s
21. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault     1m27.487s  +1.913s
22. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth    1m28.138s  +2.564s

Lotus Team Quotes:

Kimi Raikkonen – 6th: “It wasn’t an ideal qualifying session and I’m still having some problems with understeer, but the car did feel better overall than yesterday. The tyres have to be managed over a full lap for qualifying so we are where we are on the grid. We’ll see what happens tomorrow and I’ll try to do as well as I can. Overall, the car feels slightly better than in the last few races; still not where we want it to be, but slightly better.”

Romain Grosjean – 17th: “We took a gamble once again to try just one run on the prime tyres in Q1, and although it’s been a successful tactic for us recently it didn’t pay off this time. The times were much tighter than expected and ultimately we made a miscalculation with the cut-off time. It’s easy to look back and think what might have been, but we made the decision together and unfortunately in the end it was the wrong one. It’s tough to overtake here so it’s going to be a long race from seventeenth on the grid. We’ll have to pull off something quite special with the strategy to take anything from there, but of course we’ll analyse the options overnight to see what’s possible. For sure we won’t be leading after the first corner this time, but we’ll do our best.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “In hindsight we made the wrong call with Romain. We expected him to progress quite comfortably through Q1 on the medium tyre and unfortunately this wasn’t the case. Clearly, he’s starting a long way out of position and will need a strong charge through the field to make it into the top ten, but we’re extremely confident that he’ll be able to do so. How far into the points he can progress will depend on the start and our management of the tyres. It was a reasonably straightforward session for Kimi with no real dramas. He’ll be the first to admit that qualifying hasn’t been going to plan for him recently, and he’s about where we expected him to be after free practice this morning. As always we’re confident that his race pace will be exemplary, so we’re anticipating a very strong race from him starting from sixth on the grid. We’ve taken this into account after seeing how tough overtaking can be here during last season’s race. Kimi’s car is certainly more biased towards race pace than single lap performance, and we’ll be looking at ways to help Romain carve his way up the order overnight too. Our race pace on the medium tyre looked strong during practice, so we’re hopeful of making progress. Today very much followed the pattern of the weekend so far, with the option tyre suffering from blistering and graining while the prime looks to be a very strong choice for the race. We’ve seen so far that there’s about a second per lap difference in long run pace between the two. One of the keys to the race is certainly making the front left tyre – and to a lesser extent the front right – last when using the soft compound; particularly on high fuel at the start of the race.”