 HRT were initially concerned that they would fail to qualify inside the 107% cut-off, and therefore fail to qualify for the race.These fears were not realised as they sent Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan out on the softer option tyres, allowing them to record faster lap times than if they had used the harder prime compound, which most of the front-runners would use in the first period so as to keep a set of soft tyres in reserve.Both de la Rosa and Karthikeyan qualified for the race, filling out the final row of the grid.