Sebastian Vettel was delighted following on from his dominant pole position at Silverstone, and the German believes his pole will be ‘key’ as he bids to win his 3rd Grand Prix of the season from the front of the grid, the fifth time he’s been there this year.

“Silverstone is unbelievable. The corner combinations, I can only say it again and again, they’re so much fun – especially in qualifying,” Vettel said. “Our car obviously works very well in these sorts of corners, it’s so great, the speeds we reach here – I think we’re all a bit crazy, but it’s so much fun.

“The new section is also good, especially Turns 11 and 12 where you come into the new section with a big bump. I really like this track and fortunately our car always works very well here.

“It was a tight session today. In Q2 I wasn’t perfectly happy – I think I was pushing too hard and tried a bit too much, so for Q3, I went a bit more conservative. I still had to push and I had two strong laps; in the end we got the pole, which is the key for tomorrow afternoon’s grand prix.”

Mark Webber remained upbeat despite missing out on pole position to his teammate and championship rival Vettel, as the Aussie described the session as ‘pretty good’.

“That was pretty good; we did the best we could. It was a very tight fight with Sebastian again, unfortunately he got me, but we’ve got a long Grand Prix tomorrow,” Webber said.

“I have to thank the guys, they’ve absolutely buried themselves to get my car ready for this weekend and have done a great job. We’re at the front and some of our main rivals have had a more difficult day, so it’s interesting.

Unsurprisingly on the official Red Bull press release quotes, Mark Webber seemed not to be bothered about not running the upgraded wing instead of Vettel, saying that he doesn’t think they make a huge amount of difference. His body language at the end of qualifying however, was a different matter.

“Seb and I ran different spec front wings here for qualifying, but we’re still evaluating which is the best to have, I don’t think there’s a huge amount in them. The effort that goes into any GP is unique, but the English support is massive. There’s a big industry here, F1 has been here for decades and that’s reflected in people’s passion and desire to be here,” Webber added.

Team Principal Christian Horner said: “A brilliant performance by the team today – both drivers were excellent, there was really nothing to choose between the two of them. After this morning’s incident we only had one new spec front wing available for qualifying, which [chief technical officer] Adrian [Newey] was very keen to run; not necessarily because it was better, but because it offered a new direction to look at.

“Therefore it came to me to make a difficult decision as to which car it went on. A situation like that is not ideal and it doesn’t happen very often. It went to Sebastian based on Championship position, his performance in P3 and the drivers’ feedback on the different front wings from yesterday.

“In the end it was a great team performance to be first and second for tomorrow’s race in front of so many members of our factory which is based 20 minutes away. The drivers were very, very closely matched through all three sectors of the qualifying and were quick at different parts of the circuit.

“I’m really very pleased for the team to be starting its local race at the front of the grid,” he concluded.