Michael is “reasonably pleased” with his qualifying result, “considering what we have seen this weekend. Of course, we could have tried to make up one or two positions, although this would have been very difficult.

However we decided to give up this possibility in favour of the fact that we now have a fresh set and free choice of tyres going into the race.

We decided this strategy after the final practice session, and after seeing who made it into Q3, we went for it. Hopefully we can make the best of this choice tomorrow.”