Kubica happy with qualifying calls

The Renault driver conceded, however, that the right decisions were not enough to secure a better result after finishing in seventh position.

"It was a very difficult qualifying session," said the Pole. "We made the right choices with the tyres in the final part of the session, but when I completed my quickest lap on the slicks, I was happy just to have made it round without any mistakes because I was struggling to keep the car on the track.

"It was hard to get enough temperature into the tyres and our downforce level for the dry probably didn't help in this respect - but it's always easy to see what you could have done better after the session.

"We made the right calls today and it wasn't quite enough, but I'm still hopeful that we can have a good race tomorrow."

Team-mate Vitaly Petrov was also happy to return to the top ten after a difficult Friday practice, where the Russian crashed because of a rear wing failure.

He qualified in ninth position.

"It was a really tricky qualifying session because the circuit was changing all the time, and it was getting drier and drier towards the end," said Petrov. "In fact, we almost missed out in Q1 because we had expected rain early in the session but it never came - so we ran the whole session on a single set of tyres and I ended up only P16.

"Overall, I'm very happy to be back in the top ten, but there was still more performance to come on the dry tyres and we could probably have been higher up. In any case, I am confident we can have a good race tomorrow and I'd also like to congratulate Nico Hulkenberg who did a great job to take pole position."