Heidfeld says saving tyres is the right decision for the race

The German driver did not set a time in the final qualifying segment in order to save soft tyres for the race, a tactic used often by teams this year.

Heidfeld will start from ninth position.

"When I went out in Q3, we saw that Sutil was not going to do a lap time so we quite rightly came back in because the cars ahead had posted times that were considerably quicker," said Heidfeld.

"Of course, when you're in the car and you are called back, you want to stay out and have a go! But, it was the right decision because we've saved tyres. We were targeting higher than P9 and P11 but realistically, on today's pace, that's where we were so we will now look forward to a strong race tomorrow."

Team-mate Vitaly Petrov qualified in 11th, the Russian admitting there was not more pace to extract from his car today.

"The gap between me and P10 was very close, but that's racing - sometimes other cars are faster than you and tomorrow is another day," he said. "We didn't have any particular problems, just not quite enough speed so we will try our hardest in the race tomorrow.

"It's a long race and it won't be an easy one in this heat. We will analyse the data and hope we perform better on fresh tyres. I'm sure there will be a lot of overtaking and much will depend on who can look after the rear tyres the best.

"Here, the degradation is not as bad as we have seen and we will not see a race like Barcelona so I'm confident we can take a good stride forwards and get a good result."