Robert Kubica will start his first race for the Renault F1 team from the fifth row of the grid after qualifying in ninth place at the Bahrain International Circuit this afternoon. The Polish racer had a solid, untroubled first and second session and went comfortably into Q3.

Robert only completed one lap in Q3 and unfortunately he suffered with a bit of oversteer in turn 16, which cost him quite a bit of time. However, overall, he is pleased with the performance of his R30 and he knows that the car works well with high fuel loads and has good straight-line speed.

”The first target for today was to get into Q3, so we can pleased with that part of the qualifying session, but I am actually a bit disappointed to be only ninth on the grid,” he said. “I did two good laps in Q1 and Q2, but on my lap in the final part of the session I had a big snap oversteer in the hairpin at turn 16 that cost me about four tenths."

"On the positive side, we have a clearer picture of where we stand now, and it looks pretty positive when you see the cars around us on the grid: the R30 clearly has good potential. It will be a long, tough race tomorrow but our target has to be to move up the field.”

Meanwhile, his rookie teammate Vitaly Petrov also did a good job, the young Russian racer having a solid qualifying session for his first Grand Prix weekend. He went comfortably through Q1, but in Q2, he went into turn 9 a little bit too quick on his final timed lap, so he will start P17 tomorrow.