2014 Bahrain Grand Prix Sunday - Bahrain GP

Those who fear team orders could come between a Rosberg-Hamilton fight for the win, Toto Wolff has done his best to reassure you that will not be the case.

"There is no interference," he insists. "They will be racing each other, that is why they are here. They know how to race each other, we have discussed it many times, so it will be no different."

Back to that point EDD STRAW made about Jenson Button playing down McLaren's chances - Kevin Magnussen reckons the night race will play into the squad's hands.

"Having a night race means lower track temperatures and I think that will help us," he said. "And there are less high-speed corners compared to Malaysia so that should be better for us as well.

"How good we will be, it's hard to say. But it should be better than Malaysia."

Back to qualifying reaction, and with Perez showing strongly let's hear from the man who'll join him on the second row of the grid - Williams' Valtteri Bottas.

The last time Bottas started a grand prix from third place, at last year's Canadian GP after a stunning performance in rain-hit qualifying, he didn't have a hope of staying there.

He dropped to sixth on the opening lap and finished 14th. Today, he knows he has a shot at his first podium finish.

"It's a good feeling to know that this qualifying position is true pace," said Bottas. "It's completely different to Canada last year. We knew then that nearly everyone behind us was quicker, but we can really race.

"It's a really good chance to get good points with both cars, we really need to make the most out of it.

"We have the pace to fight for the podium. The fact is that Mercedes is too quick, but we have a good chance to be best of the rest."

Romain Grosjean

What can we expect to see from Lotus today? Maldonado was unsure pre-weekend, and that carried into qualifying as he was knocked out in Q1 and team-mate Romain Grosjean was slowest of the Q2 runners.

"We're not here to fight for P16 and P17 so it's a bit disappointing to see ourselves where we are in qualifying at the moment," said Maldonado after qualifying.

"We just need to be focused and try to push even more on the development of the car to catch the people around us. At the moment it's fair to say our car is a bit on the slow side and quite difficult to drive.

"However we've made an important step forwards in terms of reliability."

Grosjean was equally disappointed about the E22's performance but somewhat optimistic about the race.

"We have to try things and try to understand why we are where we are and why we are not unlocking our potential," he said.

"I hope the race pace will be a little bit better than the qualifying pace and then we can put up a good fight in the race."

Three-quarters of an hour to go until the race start, and let's talk about something fun - tyre management.

Pirelli’s Paul Hembery admitted that the difference in performance between the soft and the medium compounds the supplier has brought to Bahrain has proven bigger than expected

"We saw big performance difference between the two compounds which was between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds," he said. "We anticipated 1.5s, not 2.5s. It [pitstop strategy] will all be based on degradation, the wear will last all the race.

"It will be about relative degradation level – and we saw huge differences between drivers as well. That isn’t always the case – so there are a few question marks there."

Despite that, a two-stop strategy should be the norm. But if that sizable 2.5s difference in laptime remains, expect some teams opting for something a bit quirkier.

Bianchi was almost a quarter of a second slower than Kobayashi, but believes that the team's use of electrical energy was not optimum on his qualifying lap.

"It was a bit disappointing because we did a good job, the balance felt good and the lap was clean," said the Frenchman. "The problem was, after qualifying we saw the overlays with Max, and I was losing a bit on the straights.

"Without this, we would have been ahead of Kobayashi. It was not exit speed, it's just on the straight. We finished the lap with no energy left, but we didn't see a lot of gain in other places. Maybe we are wasting some energy in some places without any gain."

Looking at the battle at the back of the grid, and Caterham came out on top - with Kamui Kobayashi 'quickest' in 19th.

Kobayashi was only four-tenths of making Q2 after making good progress throughout the weekend. For the first time this season, he had some meaningful running on Friday and was pleased to have gone into qualifying after a straightforward weekend.

"The laptime was OK," said Kobayashi. "The most important thing is we had a smooth week, no trouble on Friday, Saturday everything was fine.

"So this is the first proper weekend so far. But what is most important is the race performance."

Then, just to add more fuel to the fire, Bernie Ecclestone got involved. He reckons the sport needs urgent changes, and claimed its current guise was "unacceptable" for fans.

Perhaps most shocking of all was Ecclestone’s suggestion that F1 had gone the wrong way by introducing a fuel-efficient formula. The new 1.6-litre turbos, while "fantastic", were not "F1 business".

"They should it in touring cars or something," he said. "Not in F1."

Ecclestone: 2014 F1 'unacceptable' for fans

Don your hard hats…