Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

Ich freue mich sehr, alle hier zu sehen. Es ist fantastisch, zum Silverstone Grand Prix zu kommen und ein volles Haus sowie die dazugehörige Stimmung zu erleben. Vor dem Wochenende habe ich gehofft, dass unsere großartige Arbeit, die wir als Team geleistet haben, zusammen mit der Energie der Fans uns beflügeln würde.

Red Bull war im Training sehr schnell, aber wir konzentrierten uns auf unsere Aufgaben und darauf, uns immer weiter zu steigern. Ich war heute Vormittag noch zum Training im Simulator, weil wir zum ersten Mal einen freien Vormittag hatten. Ich habe die Zeit investiert, alles gegeben und nichts unversucht gelassen.

Wir haben sehr hart gearbeitet und an der Strecke, im Simulator sowie in der Fabrik vollen Einsatz gezeigt, um konzentriert zu bleiben und alles aus dem Auto herauszuholen. Hinter uns allen liegen sehr schwierige Zeiten und jetzt sind endlich all die Fans wieder hier beim Großen Preis von Großbritannien. Entsprechend ist der Antrieb unvorstellbar groß, für sie hier abzuliefern.

Of course I am disappointed because I wanted to start first tomorrow but we have the sprint qualifying race to decide the main grid and then Sunday as well so we will try and get them back. Overall, the car was handling quite well but we just had a lot of understeer and I couldn’t really attack the corners as I was waiting for the front to grip up. It was a bit of a weird feeling to drive and I don’t think it was set-up or front wing related, so maybe front tyres, but we will look at it and it’s nothing dramatic. To be this close is still very good for us on a track we expected Mercedes to be very strong and we know we have a good race car so I’m still confident for the rest of the weekend.

Die letzte Runde war richtig gut. Wenn man bedenkt, dass ich der erste Fahrer mit freier Fahrt und ohne Windschatten war, dann war es eine gute Runde. Wir sind als Team an der Spitze, was klasse zu sehen ist. Red Bull sah im ersten Training stark aus, das war ein bisschen beunruhigend, aber noch ist alles drin.

Heute war erst das Qualifying, morgen erwartet uns das Sprintrennen mit vielen Chancen und darauf freue ich mich. Wir werden als Team versuchen, das bestmögliche Ergebnis einzufahren. Es war klasse, die Energie und die Atmosphäre der Zuschauer zu spüren. Es ist richtig cool, die Fans hier wieder zu sehen.

I’m very happy with today’s result. Going into qualifying with so little preparation makes things a bit more tricky, but also exciting. We did a good job in maximizing the potential of our car. Overall, I felt confident, especially in Q1. In Q2, I was not at the level that I wanted to be, but I regained my confidence and pace for the final session, finishing in P4. I think it was the best result we could have hoped for.
In terms of expectations for tomorrow, we have to wait and see. We are all heading into an unknown – to battle it out in the first Sprint Qualifying in Formula 1. We will use FP2 to prepare as well as we can, and give it our all to bring home the best possible result.

I ran wide into Turn 15 and my best lap time was deleted which is a bit of a shame but those are the rules and luckily I only lost one place. P4 would have been a bit better but we have the sprint race to make it further up the grid for Sunday so still there is plenty to play for. We improved the car a lot as the day went on but I found a bit of a difference in the balance at the end of Q3 and couldn’t get the most out of the car. I’m looking forward to tomorrow as it will be interesting to see what happens with the new sprint format and how much progress we are able to make in that race.

Tricky day with this different format, just because of the time limits you have. With less track time than we're used to, it makes it much more challenging to know what decisions to make, and you take a couple more gambles based on the information you have. Saying that, I don’t think we could've done a lot better than sixth. Maybe there was something here or there, but at the end of the day I'm satisfied with where we are. We have FP2 tomorrow to prepare for the sprint, so we’ll see what we can do.

On the whole it was a really positive day. I had really good speed all through qualifying, made some good steps and felt good with the car, so that’s important. I can’t help but feel frustrated because it’s so close to P4 and it’s always when you’re at the back of the close pack that you feel it most. But anyway, it’s progress, it’s good, it’s positive. It’s always easy to find that half a tenth with hindsight and I feel it probably was there.

Sprint qualifying tomorrow, we’ll see what happens, get a good start, make some positions and get up to fourth, where I believe we could’ve been today. That’s the plan tomorrow.

It was our best qualifying session, and to do it in front of a home crowd was such an amazing feeling. This morning in FP1 I had no confidence with the car, and here we are in P8! Following practice, we had a decision to make to try and improve the car or stick to our guns and hope the track came towards us, which it did. Everything got in a much nicer window and I felt confident and comfortable out there which allowed me to get that extra tenth or two. Ultimately, we did a fantastic job to get there and it is about tomorrow now. It is not going to be easy, but we need to be aggressive and get on the front foot.

I’m not fully satisfied with this quali. I had a good feeling with the car from the start of the session, building confidence every lap up to Q2, where I put together a strong lap time to make it into Q3. In the very last attempt however, I struggled a bit more and a couple of small mistakes here and there meant I couldn’t match that lap from Q2, losing a tenth or so that unfortunately today was very costly, as it was extremely tight. It is a pity, because the car had the pace and the lap time was there.
The Sprint Qualifying gives us a good opportunity to push tomorrow, though. Time to focus on that. The weekend is far from over yet and I will give it my all until the end.

I would have liked to end Q3 higher up because the car has looked competitive and the pace came quite easily today. Overall, it was a decent session: I was happy with my best lap in Q2, but in Q3 I struggled to find more from the car. So I think we could have been a few places higher up. It was great to see the big crowd here today and I guess the new format made Friday more interesting for the fans.

Since FP1 we’ve struggled with the car balance, far more than usual. We made some changes for Qualifying, but it just wasn’t enough. I was happy with my lap in Q2 but as I crossed the line, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, it was just so tight out there today. I think it’s going to be hard the next few days, because we can’t make changes to the car anymore. We only have FP2 to understand the tyre better ahead of the Sprint Qualifying and Sunday’s race, but we’ll fight as hard as always, it’s a different format and lots of things can happen, you never know.

It was quite a peculiar day, but it was fun to have just one hour of practice and then go straight into qualifying. Once again, we were strong enough to get into Q2, but that was pretty much as far as we could go. We were a bit too far from Q3 today. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow: the Sprint will be important for Sunday and we approach it with a simple strategy – get positions on lap one but try not to take too many risks. Making progress after the start won’t be easy with no stops, but we can still aim to gain ground in the opening stages.

P15 is not how we wanted to start our home event, but there is an opportunity to improve tomorrow thanks to the Sprint Race format. I was not totally comfortable in the car during practice, but I think we made some progress in qualifying, although it was not enough to make Q3. It was a challenge to only have one practice session today before qualifying, but it is the same for everyone. We will go away tonight and learn from today to make sure we maximise the second practice session before Sprint Qualifying.

After FP1 I’d started to get used to the circuit, but I had a lot of traffic and never managed to put together a perfect lap. So, going into Qualifying after just one session was always going to be difficult. It’s a shame to be out in Q1 today, but the field was really tight at the end and I struggled again with traffic on my final push lap. Starting tomorrow from P16 I think will be difficult, but I’ll give it everything I’ve got during Sprint Qualifying and we’ll see what I can do.

We were hoping for more so to be out in Q1 is not great: there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the lap, but there was simply no more I could get. Now let’s focus on the Sprint race: it’s a new format so let’s see what we can get from it. We need to do our best and make up some places as we have done in previous races to give ourselves a better shot on Sunday.

The car was feeling good and I could have done a better lap if the car balance had been in a slightly better window but overall, I am quite pleased. When I finished the lap, I was happy and then frustrated. Happy as a I felt it was a good lap but frustrated that it was slow. We have both the Sprint Qualifying and the Grand Prix itself to move forwards and we have FP2 to try and see if we can improve the issue, so that’s what we are going to focus on. 

It was positive in one way because we made some changes that felt good, but obviously the pace we have is unfortunately all we’ve got. Of course, we could’ve improved here or there but generally it wasn’t possible to get into Q2. Still, the work is not done yet. We will keep on pushing, keep on trying and keep working on ourselves. It was interesting to see how everybody was excited to try something new and I’m excited to see how sprint qualifying will go. It’s a chance for us if some cars have issues, we might profit from that. As long as we are in the race, we’re in contention of starting a bit further ahead than we are now, so fingers crossed and let’s go forwards.

It was one of our better qualifying performances in terms of the balance. I think after having a very frustrating second race in Austria, it was good to get that. It feels a little like Formula 2, where I came from. I have great memories from Formula 2 here last year when I won my first race. There’s loads of similarities and I have to say I really like this environment. I generally really like how the weekend goes and I think you just need to see how many people have come out on a Friday, I’ve never seen that before in my life – so it was really cool to be out there.