"I am really pleased to score my first points of the season and to confirm the qualifying performance, " he told reporters.
German rookie Stefan Bradl was fourth for LCR Honda in his best qualifying performance, while Britain's Cal Crutchlow was fifth and his Yamaha Monster tech 3 teammate Andrea Dovizioso was seventh.
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Hamilton's teammate Jenson Button will start from fourth after he enjoyed a much improved qualifying performance, having struggled for much of the season after winning the opening race of the season.
"For sure the performance in qualifying was not up to our standard, " he said.
However, GB player Adam Scholefield hopes this month's performance in qualifying for the European Championships will convince UK Sport to allocate them some of the Team 2012 money.
Williams' other driving force, Patrick Head, who had missed the win last weekend to continue working at the team's Oxfordshire factory, had developed that theme after Schumacher's sublime performance in Saturday qualifying.
"The true performance came out in qualifying and in the first one or two laps in the race, " he added.
Massa, who was nearly half a second slower than Alonso, said it was a good team performance in what he described as a "tough" qualifying session.
Pro Stock points leader Edwards secured his eighth No. 1 qualifying position of the season and 49th of his career with his Friday performance of 6.545 at 211.36.
David Coulthard failed to get past the first round of qualifying for the second successive race as a combination of traffic and poor tyre performance saw him settle for 17th on the grid.
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Only a last-minute goal from Cole saved England from defeat at Wembley, but Capello drew some positives from the salvaged draw, saying the performance was another step forward for his side ahead of World Cup qualifying campaign which begins in Andorra on 6 September.
In the long jump Rutherford produced a patchy final performance and could not match his new national record (8.30m) he achieved in qualifying.
I'm very curious to see how the qualifying goes with the new formula -- we will just be concentrating on doing four fast laps and the maximum performance we can get.
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