Magnussen: Pole position for us!

Although Magnussen's best lap time of 1:33.181 was a massive 1.8 seconds shy of Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas's pole-winning time, an impressive two tenths up on his next 'Formula 1.5' rival Esteban Ocon in the Force India and six tenths faster than Romain Grosjean in the sister Haas car.

Magnussen summed up his afternoon at the office, "I’m happy. It’s best of the rest, again and pole position for us! It’s a good feeling. It was a good lap. It could’ve been better."

"The only place I messed up was in turn two. I hit the curb and definitely when you do that, you lose time with wheelspin. I thought from there it would probably be difficult, but I kept it together and did a good rest of the lap."

"Luckily, it’s not like the Red Bulls qualified into Q3 and then just didn’t run. We have more people running the hypersoft tire – that’s a bit better for us. It would’ve been worse if the Force Indias or both Saubers had started just outside the top-10 with fresh tires. That would’ve been tricky."

"I’m sure the Red Bulls will come back strong. It’ll be interesting to see how far they get. There’s a good chance they’ll get back up, but the best of the rest is our target," added Magnussen.