United States GP: Marussia Saturday quotes

Charles Pic - 20th: "It was a good qualifying session and the most important thing is that we got both our cars ahead of both Caterhams. Looking at the detail though, I missed some important track time this morning because of the incident with Perez and we were not able to get a good feel for the car by the end of FP3. There was more to come for qualifying for sure and then towards the end of Q1 we hit some traffic. Overall, despite not having fully optimised our package, I am pleased with where we ended up. It is a fantastic result for the team and to keep moving forward like this with each new race is very positive. Now we will focus on the race and take time tonight to consider the best way to play things to bring us a good result. My thanks to the whole team for such a great job."

John Booth, Team Principal: "Today is an important day for the whole team as it represents the culmination of the aggressive development programme we have undertaken since the mid-season. We have demonstrated that we are now faster than the Caterhams after both cars achieved the objective of outqualifying them.

"The day got off to a less than positive start for Charles. As a consequence of the incident with Perez in FP3, he missed a significant amount of track time and had to use a compromised car for the last 30 minutes of the session, which for sure hurt his qualifying performance due to the lack of running on what has proved to be a track where mileage is essential. Nevertheless, he did a fantastic job in qualifying and I'm sure the race tomorrow will provide him with the opportunity to demonstrate even more of his maturing talent. Timo has had a fantastic day from the off. He and his engineers had a very productive morning in ensuring that the car was making optimal use of its tyres and also giving him good position on track. Into qualifying we knew it would be tricky to judge the run length required, which is why we opted to fuel the cars for the session and use the pit crew to change tyres in order to achieve the optimal second run length. This worked out perfectly and today's performance has been a real credit to the whole race team, who have worked together both to solve the problems with Charles' damaged car and also to play out qualifying to maximum effect.

"We are looking forward to the race tomorrow now. Tyres will be the hot topic and we must ensure we maintain this momentum and execute our strategy perfectly to enjoy another fantastic fight with the cars around us."