Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

I’m overwhelmed to get pole position because I’ve had a pretty tough day in the car, particularly after yesterday went so well. I was really happy on Friday and we changed a couple of small things overnight, just the tiniest of tweaks. But it was a real handful today because track conditions had changed. Nico had a strong P3 and first two sessions of qualifying, so we were making small adjustments to the differential to try and make improvements to how the car was handling for Q3. On that final run, I really had to eke out everything and more from the car and myself to get pole and I’m so happy that I managed it. The hard work from the team and the development step we have made this weekend are totally inspiring for me – I haven’t experienced this level of performance before. I’ve never won at this circuit and I would love to, because my support in Barcelona has been growing every year and I have some amazing fans here in Spain. We are going to give it everything we can tomorrow to get the win.

I had a good feeling throughout today and I quite enjoyed Qualifying. I had a good lap at the end but Lewis just did a better job in Q3. Starting second is a bit of a disadvantage but it’s such a long straight down to the first corner, so I will hope to have a better start than Lewis tomorrow and overtake him. It’s also a long race where tyre degradation will be a key issue so there may be some opportunities to take advantage. I’m looking forward to tomorrow and I’ll be giving everything to take advantage of this amazing Silver Arrow that we have at the moment and hopefully extend my lead in the Championship.

"Without putting too much attention on Mercedes, I'm happy with what I'm doing, so I think today was pretty good and I wasn't too disappointed with the lap. I don't really see how I could have improved much more today, so I think we're doing the best we can, but now that we're around third or fourth I want to close the gap to the silver cars! Sorry for Seb, he's had a pretty rough weekend. I prefer it when we are both able to compete. Looking to tomorrow, then I think third is the best we can do. If Mercedes continue at the pace they had today then realistically we won't catch them, so then third, although it wouldn't be a victory, it would be really satisfying."

It has been quite a tough weekend up until now. I had to build a lot of confidence but it all came together when it mattered and I managed to get a good lap. We have made some set-up changes since FP3 and they worked well but it will be even better in the race. It’s difficult to overtake here and so qualifying is important. It’s going to be a close race behind the Mercedes and so I am really looking forward to tomorrow.

"It's very positive for everybody in the team to be on the third row of the grid. It's where we want to be and there is certainly more to come. The race should be interesting. It's difficult to overtake on this track and we'll be looking to save the tyres as much as possible in the first stint to see how far as we can go with them. We will see what we can achieve tomorrow but it goes without saying that it would be good to finally score some points."

"We can't be pleased with sixth place, because naturally we want to be fighting for the top places. But compared to the last race, we have managed to solve some problems and have improved the feeling I have from the car. Yesterday, the long run went well and, in general, we did a good job, but there is still much more to do, because we are not yet as fast as we would like to be. Tomorrow, the goal is to get a good start and then have a normal race. Of course, we will also need a good strategy and we will have to keep an eye on our tyre management. It won't be easy, but we are definitely going to fight."

"This wasn't a good qualifying session, but the outcome was more or less what we could have expected on a difficult weekend, especially in terms of grip, not just for us but for all the teams. I'd definitely have liked to be starting from further up, but that's how it went today, we weren't quick enough and now we must think about tomorrow and try to make up some places to score as many points as possible. Of the updates we brought here, some worked, while others need further testing. There is a definite improvement compared to China, but we have some problems with the rear, despite the many set-up changes we made. Kimi did very well and I hope that both Ferraris can finish higher up. Now we must find the best strategy for tomorrow and try to get a good start. But above all, we mustn't make any mistakes, because this race demands a high level of concentration."

“It’s pretty tough for everyone out there - the track doesn’t have much grip, so we spent each session working away at the car’s balance to try and find something that works. We almost got there, but still had too much understeer for the final run. “Still, it wasn’t too bad: we probably could’ve found a little more time within the set-up but it probably wasn’t going to be enough to make much of a difference. “There’s going to be lots of sliding in the race tomorrow. We’ve done a pretty good job in that we’ve saved a set of options for the race - I’m not yet sure what strategy we’ll adopt, but it’s good to have some leeway on strategy. “We’ve definitely shown signs of improvement this weekend, although we’re still not yet where we want to be.”

I am disappointed with my lap today as I lost the rear in Turn 10 after braking, it’s nothing to do with the car, it was my mistake. I had been doing really well throughout the rest of the session so feel annoyed I didn’t do it when it really mattered. The race is long tomorrow and the car has good potential so we have a lot to do.

"My lap was very good and I am pleased with the effort we put in during qualifying. We made some steps forward with handling and set-up compared to FP3 this morning, but we still ended up a little bit short of Q3. Considering that we haven't been totally comfortable with the car for most of the weekend, P11 is a very good place to start the race and gives us an extra set of medium tyres compared to the rest of the top ten. I expect a very strategic race tomorrow, especially as most of the teams around us seem to be on a similar level when it comes to race pace. It's going to be a challenge for everyone and tyre management will be a key point, but points are within our reach."

"I think we finished qualifying more or less where we expected. Maybe a place in Q3 was possible, but I did not manage to complete my final run in Q2 because my preparation lap was not ideal. There was too much traffic and my tyres were not optimised, which is why I chose to abort my final quick lap and save the tyres. Coming here we knew this track would be quite a difficult one for us, but we still believe we can be competitive tomorrow. I think the race will be all about getting the strategy choice right because it’s so difficult to overtake on this track. Our race pace is looking promising so we have a chance to get back some positions tomorrow.”

"I think we got the maximum out of the package today, even though we might have been able to do a few things better. But the race is tomorrow and we've seen from the past that we can still bring home points having started from P13."

„Das war das Maximum, was wir heute erreichen konnten. Angesichts der Schwierigkeiten, die ich gestern hatte, leistete das Team sehr gute Arbeit, um die Dinge in den Griff zu bekommen. Wir haben definitiv noch einiges auszusortieren, aber dennoch ist es motivierend, näher an unseren Konkurrenten dran zu sein. Natürlich sind wir mit dem, was wir bisher erreicht haben, nicht zufrieden, aber mit einigen weiteren Anstrengungen werden wir in den Bereich der Top Ten kommen. Wir müssen das Positive mitnehmen und das Negative genau analysieren. Morgen wird es bestimmt nicht einfach, weil die Asphalttemperatur wohl ziemlich hoch sein wird, und es unter diesen Umständen nicht leicht ist, die Reifen zu schonen. Wie immer werden wir unser Bestes geben.”

“We’ve definitely made improvements to the car - it’s just a shame I couldn’t prove it to the team this afternoon. “I don’t exactly know what the problem was with my car. We had an issue with the power unit during Q1 that we tried to fix. But, in Q2, we decided to save the engine and retire the car. “Tyres are going to play a big role in the race tomorrow, so let’s see how things pan out. I’ll be aiming to work cleanly through the first lap, but I think we might struggle a little bit - our qualifying pace looks a little stronger than our race pace. “It’s a shame, but at least we have some tyres saved for the race, so I hope we can do something positive.”

"I left the garage for Q3 and lost drive in second gear; I still had third gear and above so we thought we could do the lap with that, but by Turn 1 I had lost all the other gears, so we couldn't continue. I was getting more in to the rhythm with each lap after missing yesterday's sessions. It was quite close between the cars after the Mercedes and I think I could have had a go for P3 today, but we didn't get that far. I'm of course quite disappointed."

„Es war natürlich nicht das Resultat, das ich mir erhofft habe. Aber so ist es eben manchmal im Qualifying. Leider haben wir heute in die falsche Richtung gearbeitet. Im dritten freien Training hatte ich Probleme, die Reifen auf Temperatur zu bringen. Im Qualifying war es dann genau anders herum, wir haben die Reifen extrem überhitzt. Das haben wir nach meinem zweiten Lauf realisiert und sofort versucht, es im dritten Run besser zu machen. Das ist uns auch ein wenig gelungen, allerdings war die Voreinstellung schon gemacht, und wir konnten in der kurzen Zeit keine grossen Änderungen mehr vornehmen. Ich denke, wir haben dadurch fast eine Sekunde pro Runde und damit einige Startplätze verloren. Wir haben unser Ziel deutlich verpasst. Dennoch haben wir etwas gelernt heute und von dieser Position aus ist auch noch einiges möglich. Ich denke, mit einer guten Pace im Rennen werde ich am Ende dort sein, wo ich hingehöre.“

“I’m really happy with that. I’m not sure we got the balance exactly where we would have liked it, but in the end my second quick lap was pretty together and it all came good when it counted. That session showed we have made a step forward with our new developments; there’s no doubt that we are closer to the Saubers - and to Q2 contention - and we’ve pulled away from the Caterhams by a good margin. As I say, there was definitely more to come from the car, so I’m pretty optimistic for the race tomorrow. I think we can have a good fight.”

“Such a shame. My second quick lap was really coming together and I had gained a lot of time in the first two sectors, but I braked too late into turn 10 and ran wide. I was just pushing a bit too hard, but we had the car and today we could have been close to a place in Q2, so we had everything to push for. As ever, we have to take the positives and today they are that we have confirmation that we have made a good performance step towards the Saubers and we can really focus on the cars ahead now, not those behind. I have some work to do at the beginning of the race but if I can get a good start I am sure we can pull something special back, so I’m really look forward to tomorrow now.”

"For me today's been both good and bad. I'm pleased I've qualified ahead of my teammate for the first time this year, especially because it's at a track I really like and one everyone knows well, but overall we're obviously not happy with where we are with performance and we need to improve. "In both FP3 and quali I had similar low-grip issues to yesterday and that's costing a lot of laptime. The car behaviour is unpredictable pretty much the whole way round the track and that makes putting together a clean lap very difficult. However, we have to put this behind us and focus on the race. Overall, we're starting from the same bit of the grid as we have for most of the season and we have to focus on having a clean race, maintaining the much improved reliability we've had since China and grabbing whatever opportunities come our way. I want to leave Spain on a positive note and we'll all do everything we can to give us the best chance of making that happen."

"Another difficult day with more of the same grip problems I had in both practice sessions yesterday. We made quite a few changes to the car for FP3 but it still didn't improve things enough, so we went into quali with a package we knew we'd be struggling with. "In quali we went for two single lap runs on options and the first was ok, but on my quick lap on the second run I lost a bit of time behind Bianchi and had the same sort of balance problems I'd had in all the practice sessions so I just couldn't get any more out of the car. Maybe with a completely clean lap I'd have been a couple of tenths up, but not enough to be where we're aiming for."

"It was part of the strategy not to run in Q2, save new tyres and prepare for an aggressive race tomorrow. I think it was a sensible decision to take. It's true that this is not the best track for overtaking but I will do my best to pass the cars in front of me from the left, from the right, from everywhere, taking every opportunity to gain positions. The car has been a bit difficult to drive for the whole weekend, except for the long runs, so I hope for a good race tomorrow."

"I had a big chance of doing well in the session but unfortunately I lost the car with big snap oversteer in the exit of the corner in turn 3. We need to have a look at what happened and work to get ready for tomorrow. We were quite competitive today in terms of pace and kept improving throughout the weekend. With tyres available for the race we can work on the strategy and hopefully recover places on Sunday."