Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Das war ein großartiger Start in das Wochenende. Ehrlich gesagt fühlt es sich gar nicht so an, als ob das letzte Rennen schon so lange her wäre! Die Jungs und Mädels in den Werken haben sich riesig angestrengt, um diese Performance aus unserem Auto herauszuholen. Es ist mir eine große Ehre, dieses Auto fahren zu dürfen. Ich habe gestern und heute hart mit meinen Ingenieuren gearbeitet, um eine gute Balance zu finden. Während der Session habe ich einfach alles gegeben und versucht, alle Puzzleteile zusammenzubekommen. Es macht so viel Spaß, wenn es passt. Für diesen Wettkampf lebe ich. Ich bin jedem bei Mercedes für seine harte Arbeit bislang unglaublich dankbar. Dennoch liegt heute Nacht noch viel Arbeit vor uns. Wir müssen unsere Hausaufgaben für das Rennen machen. Es wird eine große Herausforderung, um den Sieg zu kämpfen. Wir werden so hart wie möglich arbeiten, um sicherzustellen, dass wir ein gutes Rennen fahren.

Lewis hat heute gute Arbeit abgeliefert. Er fuhr wie ein Champion. Ich hatte ebenfalls das Gefühl, dass der Speed im Auto steckte. Leider bekam ich keine perfekte Runde zusammen. Insgesamt bin ich happy, dass das Team uns erneut ein super Auto hingestellt hat. Es ist auch in diesem Jahr das schnellste von allen. Vielen Dank an beide Werke dafür. Morgen habe ich noch alle Chancen. Uns steht ein langes Rennen bevor. Es kann noch viel passieren und ich werde alles geben. Meine Pace auf Long Runs war am Freitag besser als jene von Lewis. Aber er hat einige Setupänderungen an seinem Auto vorgenommen. Möglicherweise ist also noch mehr von ihm zu erwarten.

Mercedes have been ahead all weekend so we knew that on pure pace we were fighting for the best of the rest. Qualifying P3 means that we have done a very good job in getting the most out of the car; especially as the Ferrari’s looked strong and were pushing us hard. It will be a tough battle tomorrow so we need to get the start right and have a good strategy to secure a podium and really start the season on a high note.

Let’s keep our feet on the ground. So far this weekend, it’s gone well and we’ve had no problems with the car. It’s a shame that third place escaped us, as that would have made us the first team behind Mercedes, but it wasn’t by much and, after all the race is tomorrow. We lost third place because my first run wasn’t quick enough: I’m not very pleased with myself, because there was still some performance to be found, which would have meant I’d have qualified one place higher. In terms of strategy, maybe we could have done something different, but basically the result is down to me. First and second are a long way in front, but the race is tomorrow and anything can happen during the Grand Prix. A podium? There’s not much of a gap between third and fourth on the grid, so I think the podium is a realistic goal and that’s what we have to aim for.

On my quick lap, I lost around three tenths at turn 3 and then I made a couple of mistakes in the next two corners. We knew we couldn’t fight the Mercedes, at least not in today’s qualifying, but third place on the grid was possible. In any case, during free practice, we saw that our long runs are pretty good, so we can be confident of having a good race. All we need to do is get a good start and then give it our best, but I think we can fight for a good position. As a team, we are working well together and we have a pretty clear picture of the situation. We know we are quick, but we need to improve in all sectors and, as for myself, I have to drive better.

It was great to finally start the season and to have a very tight qualifying session. The car performed well and we were fighting with Ferrari throughout. Unfortunately towards the end of Q2 I started to feel a pain in my back. Under the circumstances I’m happy with sixth place, but as Felipe proved, this is not a true indication of our pace. Given the back complaint I had during the session, the team and I felt it sensible to get me checked out at the local hospital and we await their diagnosis.

We made progress through the session which is promising, it was so good to feel the car for once and push it properly. I think seventh is where we are now and I’m happy we achieved that as the weekend hasn’t gone well until now and qualifying was the first time I used the soft tyre. The drivability has been tricky; we suffered a bit this time last year, but there are a few more issues this year which weren’t expected, but it’s how it is and we need to try and sort it out. I’m really happy with seventh as realistically that’s the best we could have done today. The progress we made through qualifying is real and hopefully we can carry that on for the race.

I’m very happy, it feels great to be starting my first ever Formula 1 race from P8 on the grid tomorrow! It was quite a smooth qualifying session apart from Q1, where I made a small mistake, but I didn’t let that affect me and from then onwards everything went really well. I just kept focused and tuned the car to my liking to extract its full potential. I feel very comfortable in the car, I’m really enjoying myself a lot. It’s difficult to know what to expect tomorrow, as it will be my first race, but I’m looking forward to it. It will surely be a bit of an adventure but this is what I’ve been preparing myself for the whole winter and I feel ready.

I’m really happy to be back in Q3, and especially happy for our guys who have been working so hard over the last twelve months,” he said. “We knew we had a good car from winter testing and today we are more or less where we thought we could be. It’s a tight field and if I had sneaked another two tenths from my lap, I would have been seventh on the grid. I think we can generally be very happy with what we’ve been doing. Our long runs have looked good so far so let’s see what we can do during the race tomorrow.

“Q3 was the target and it’s important we got to reach it,” he said. “For sure you always want more, we want to be at the top, but we realise that we have to go step by step. This is a huge step forward.” “The performance is much better than last year and it’s a good starting point. It’s encouraging as we’ve worked hard in the right direction over the winter. The gaps are getting closer, excluding Mercedes, we’re in that group and we need to get closer. It’s not a progression of the car, it’s new and we need to make progress on our potential.”

Wir können uns als Team sehr darüber freuen, dass wir es beinahe ins Q3 des Zeittrainings geschafft haben. Nach dem wir am Freitag das erste freie Training verpasst hatten, konnten wir nicht wie geplant an der Performance des Autos arbeiten, zumal ich auch weniger Zeit hatte, mich mit der neuen Strecke hier in Melbourne vertraut zu machen. Insgesamt bin ich aber zufrieden mit dem Ergebnis und freue mich nun auf das Rennen. Morgen bestreite ich meinen ersten Formel-1-Grand-Prix; es ist ein wichtiger Tag, an dem wir in die Punkte fahren wollen.

Today’s final practice was good for me to get back running again and try some different set-ups, so it was very useful before going into qualifying. I felt good in the car from the start and did a good Q1. The first run in Q2 was reasonable, even though I had something stuck in my back so my shoulder hurt a bit. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good lap because the tyres were not ready. During the second push-lap, I made a mistake out of Turn 4, where I went a bit too wide and lost the rear, losing quite a lot of time. It’s a shame but I can’t change any of this now. I look forward to tomorrow, my first ever Formula 1 race. The car is working well and hopefully we will be able to score some points as we have a good race pace.

We are trying our best. It was hard with the few laps that we had and I was just trying to get up to speed; I didn't have enough confidence to make a good lap," said Dany afterwards. "It's not easy at the moment because we are trying to solve some problems, but we are making progress.

We always want to be further up the grid, but being realistic I don’t think we had the performance today to challenge for Q3. However, it’s only the first qualifying session of the season, so it’s still very early days and we have a lot of development work ahead of us. I enjoyed the qualifying session today: it was good fun out there and I felt comfortable in the car, and as a team we squeezed everything we could from the session. For tomorrow, I’m optimistic that our race pace will be stronger than our qualifying pace, as was often the case last year, so I’m looking forward to the race.

It was quite a difficult qualifying session and the windy conditions seemed to have a big impact on our car. In terms of performance, I think we are where we predicted because we knew Q2 was achievable and we managed to get the maximum from the car. For tomorrow, we know this is a race where anything can happen: it’s unpredictable and sometimes you have to be patient. We need to see what the weather is like because the wind and track temperature will play a big part. Whatever happens, I will work hard to have a competitive race and target some points.

Ich bin ein wenig enttäuscht über den 16. Platz, und als Team können wir mit diesem Ergebnis nicht zufrieden sein. Ich hatte gestern ein gutes Gefühl im Auto, aber heute ist es mir nicht gelungen, das richtige Vertrauen ins Fahrzeug zu finden. Insbesondere in den Bremszonen hatte ich gewisse Schwierigkeiten. Wir müssen über Nacht die Daten auswerten und die Änderungen am Auto von gestern auf heute analysieren, um daraus Erkenntnisse zu ziehen und morgen im Rennen angreifen zu können.

“This level of performance wasn’t a surprise for us: we knew from winter testing that the pace wasn’t there, so we knew we weren’t going to be competitive here. “However, there’s a good feeling about the car – I know we’re so far off, but the basic car is there beneath me, and we’re adding to our experience and learning with every lap we do. “And that’s really impressed me – we’ve gone through our first race weekend together, and we’ve managed to solve each issue that’s confronted us. There’s just a lot of work needed to add power and downforce – but this is an important car for the future of McLaren-Honda. “It’s going to be a really difficult race for us – we haven’t done a race distance yet, and my longest run is 12 laps – but we want to do the best we can because there’s so much learning to be had. “It’ll be a tough day, but we’ll be doing our absolute best.”

“Things were going well on my first run in Q1. Then, on my second run, I had a slight problem with the engine – it didn’t really matter, as we’d have needed a bit of luck to get into Q2. “For tomorrow’s race, we’re not really focused on getting points – they’re not really on the cards for us – but we’ll go racing tomorrow to try and learn. We haven’t done a full race distance yet, so progress tomorrow will be important. If we can finish, we’ll learn a lot; and, even if we don’t, there’ll still be something useful to take home. “This isn’t where we want to be, but we’re not ready to win races yet. We’ll put our heads down and keep learning, and we’ll try and take as much experience and knowledge from the race tomorrow as we can.”

“It goes without saying that I’m disappointed that we ran out of time for qualifying. Disappointed not just for me, but for the whole team, because the effort this week has been tremendous. What matters most is that we’re here, so we have to focus on that fact and look to the future. We knew it would be difficult, that we would experience some challenges and that is what happened, but we are better placed for the next few races and that in itself justifies the hard work over the past few days.”

“A tough way to start the season but we have worked together to try to overcome our problems and already I feel a big part of the team. They are like a family and it is nice to see the true spirit, even if we had hoped for more this weekend. Certainly we came here to go racing and it is difficult that we haven’t been able to get the cars out but that leaves me feeling all the more determined to work hard with everybody to push for more in the coming races.”