After the FP1, FP2 and FP3 sessions on Friday and Saturday morning, the excitement built for qualifying on Saturday lunchtime. We were sitting on one of the grassy banks around the circuit, and the large number of fans there made a circuit that is very familiar to me from various winter testing sessions at the track seem somewhat different when there were so many people there sitting on the normally quiet slopes.
There was a huge amount of support for the local favourite Fernando Alonso, although the British drivers and Kimi Raikkonen all had notable levels of support too, as did Red Bull in general and Sebastian Vettel in particular. It was great to see so many travelling fans not just from across Europe, but from across the world. There was a group of fans waving Mexican flags near us who presumably had had quite a long journey to be at the circuit.
Qualifying was exciting as ever, with the last session featuring some last minute runs to get some of the top teams in good grid positions for the race on Sunday.
Here are some of my pictures from qualifying. I hope that you like them.
There is an index of my photos from the Grand Prix weekend here.