France Saturday quotes: BMW

Nick Heidfeld - 12th: "The circuit here in Magny-Cours is completely different to the one in Montreal, and right from the beginning of the weekend here we were not as good as we have been recently. But still we were hoping for a better qualifying. I'm 12th and Robert just made it into the top ten of qualifying - this is, of course, not what we at the BMW Sauber F1 Team expect from ourselves.

"If I just look at my situation I can see significant progress. I was much closer to getting the best out of the car. There were just hundreds of a second between Robert's and my lap times. I will be starting from 11th because Lewis Hamilton has to move back, and I can choose my fuel strategy for the race. Although even the best strategy doesn't improve the pace, we want to have a good race tomorrow."

Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): "Of course we are not happy with the qualifying result. However, we saw in the free practice sessions our car is not as quick as usual. Nick was unlucky today. Although being just six hundreds of a second slower than Robert, he missed the top ten qualifying. Also Robert's qualifying did not run smoothly. We changed from harder to softer tyre compounds and then back to the harder ones. In the end, we just missed the second row. We will start the race from sixth and 11th. We will see after the first pit stops what we can achieve from these positions."

Willy Rampf (Technical Director): "This was a difficult qualifying that turned out to be a game of poker with the tyres. We were switching back and forth between the two compounds, but weren't really happy with either. The Option had more grip but less stability than the Prime. We obviously expected a better result. Nick was very close to Robert in Q2 but was just unlucky not to make it to Q3."