Lotus boss speechless after Q2 effort

"I'm speechless! What a day," said Fernandes after the Finn gave his team its best qualifying performance of the season so far.

"To get 15th place in our home country, in front of our home crowd is amazing. I'm over the moon and just so excited.

"We gave the Toro Rossos a run for their money today and Jarno was just unfortunate to get blocked, otherwise he'd have been in Q2 as well. Tomorrow's another day, and we'll see what happens, but it's a good step forward.

"Today we'll enjoy it, and we'll live for the day, and we'll see what happens tomorrow."

Kovalainen added: "I'm so pleased. I really like these conditions - it's very hard to judge your speed and you really have to take some risks, and all the time you're feeling like you might lose the car, but that's the challenge and I love it!

"Getting to Q2 really exceeds expectations for me and the whole team - yes of course we've been a little bit lucky today for sure, but it means we beat the other new teams, again.

"Although we were lucky, we played our strategy just right -if you look at the McLarens and Ferraris they didn't think it was going to rain that much and look what happened. They missed their window at the beginning of the session and we took full advantage of it. Now I can't wait to race tomorrow."

Team-mate Jarno Trulli had to settle for 18th position after being slowed down by traffic, but the Italian felt he too could have made it to Q2.

"It was disappointing because I was doing very well," he said. "Unfortunately on my quickest lap a car spun in front of me, which impeded me through the second and third sector so I couldn't close my fast lap; and then the rain was getting worse, so there was no chance to improve on lap time.

"Still - we'll do our best tomorrow and we'll see what happens."