Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Ferrari hat großartige Arbeit geleistet. Sie sind hier sehr nah an uns dran und es wird ein guter Kampf. Meine Runde war gut, aber nicht perfekt. Meine Qualifyingrunde in Spa war definitiv besser. Aber das Auto hat sich am gesamten Wochenende gut angefühlt und die Crew war so fantastisch wie immer. Die Jungs in der Garage haben ebenfalls einen tollen Job gemacht, um Nicos Auto nach dem Training hinzubekommen. Ich kenne das Problem nicht, mache mir für morgen aber keine Sorgen. Die Pole ist immer ein großartiges Gefühl. Der Weg hin zu Kurve eins ist aber sehr lang und die Ferrari sind stark von der Linie weg. Letztes Jahr hatte ich keinen guten Start und musste hart kämpfen. Es ist also noch nichts erledigt. Bei unseren Longrun-Simulationen haben wir allerdings eine starke Pace gezeigt. Hoffentlich können wir morgen im Rennen daran anknüpfen.

It was the best qualifying of the year, I’m happy for all the team and the people who support us. This was the perfect time for us: obviously we’d like to get such a good result at every race, but if I have to choose one it’s here. Today was a good day, it gives us a good chance for the race, but this doesn’t mean that tomorrow we can beat everybody. We need to do a good job. I’m a bit surprised because we knew our weaknesses and the layout of this track, but everything worked well and we were closer to Mercedes than we what we expected. It’s impossible to say what’s going to happen tomorrow, obviously our aim is to make a good start then go safely into the first corner, do the maximum and hopefully we’ll be able to challenge. We’ll try to do our best and see how it ends up.

I’m very happy, not entirely with my lap as I made a bit of mistake in Lesmo 1, but for the fantastic result it is for the team. It puts us in a great position for tomorrow: it’s a bit of a surprise to be so close to Mercedes today, but we have to wait and see tomorrow. We know that they will be very strong in the race and they will be the ones to beat if we want to win, but maybe with all the power from the tifosi we can have a surprise. This time is very different for me compared to the previous years I’ve been here: when you’re driving you can see people clapping and cheering, pushing and supporting you and it’s fantastic. Inside and outside the track there are so many fans: for us this is the most special race of the calendar.

Zunächst einmal vielen Dank an die Jungs in der Garage, dass sie das Auto gerade rechtzeitig zum Qualifying fertig bekommen haben. Ich hatte eine gute Session und meine Runden fühlten sich ziemlich gut an. Nach dem Problem im 3. Training musste ich leider einen alten Motor benutzen, der schon an fünf Rennwochenenden eingesetzt worden war. Deshalb fehlte mir etwas Power. Mit jedem Kilometer verlierst du etwas Leistung, und Monza ist eine Power-Strecke, auf der der Motor einen großen Einfluss hat. Morgen wird es schwierig, denn deswegen bin ich wahrscheinlich auch im Rennen ein bisschen langsamer. Aber ich gebe niemals auf. Ich muss für einen super Start kämpfen und hoffentlich die beiden Ferrari vor mir schnell überholen um eine Chance zu haben, Lewis einzuholen. Ein enttäuschender und unglücklicher Nachmittag also - aber morgen ist noch einiges drin.

Ferrari were maybe a little bit too quick today, and even with a perfect lap it would have been difficult to match them. I'm still happy with our performance and where we are. Power is very important on this circuit so we may be able to fight with Nico (Rosberg) but it is a long race. I have my sights on the podium but most importantly we must have a good race, scores some valuable points and make sure we make no mistakes.

It wasn’t a perfect qualifying as I didn’t get a great slipstream in the final lap. I think fifth and sixth was the maximum as the Ferraris were just a bit out reach. Tomorrow is a new day and we will certainly do everything we can to challenge them. The race pace looks strong so I am after a good result.

I am pretty happy with the job I did today in qualifying. I was able to improve my time in every session and each lap was pretty good. In Q3 I was a bit too optimistic and tried to get a tow from Kimi on the straight but it didn't work: it actually cost me a couple of tenths but in any case it wouldn't have been enough to be in front of the two Williams cars. The race will be hard, but our target should be to challenge Williams ahead of us. The b-spec car has been performing solidly in the past few races so I see no reason why we shouldn't be in a position to have a good performance tomorrow. A good start will be crucial as the strategy options are quite straightforward; one of the keys of the race will be tyre degradation, but I am confident we will be strong and score good points.

It's quite positive in way when you say that you are disappointed with qualifying in eighth position but it wasn't a perfect Q3 session for us and we have to analyse why we didn't have the pace to be further up the order. It's a long race tomorrow and there are opportunities to overtake here so there's definitely good potential for scoring a nice collection of points.

It’s good to be in the top ten, but without the problems in Q3 there was the potential to be much higher up the grid. I just lost power on my in-lap following my first run on used tyres, which was caused by a problem with the fuel system. I made it back to the pits, but the mechanics had to push me back to the garage and we lost a lot of time. When we tried to restart the car, the gearbox was stuck in between two gears and I couldn’t select neutral in time to get out again for a lap on new softs. It’s a shame because I think sixth or seventh place was possible today. I’m sure we will fix these issues for tomorrow, but grid position is important here so it’s going to be a bit more difficult starting from ninth. The midfield is looking very competitive and some of the teams have stepped up their game since yesterday. We will have to fight hard to get the points we need.

For sure I was expecting to be in the top ten but I've been struggling to get temperature into the tyres and I didn't get very clean laps in Q2 so we lost out by a very small margin. The track changed a lot from this morning and the warmer weather made the rear very nervous. In the race we have an extra set of fresh tyres and we are in a very strong position to fight for good points, I think the top five is possible.

Als erstes möchte ich festhalten, dass ich in punkto Balance des Autos ein gutes Gefühl hatte und das Bestmögliche herausholen konnte. Deshalb war ich auch zuversichtlich in Q3 zu kommen. Aber bei meinem zweiten Versuch in Q2 machte ich einen Fehler und musste die Runde abbrechen. Nichtsdestotrotz ist dieser Startplatz eine gute Position, um in die Punkteränge zu kommen.

Insgesamt gesehen war es ein guter Tag. Wir konnten eine gute Leistung zeigen und erreichten Q3. Dafür gebührt dem ganzen Team ein Lob. Uns ist es gelungen bezüglich der Fahrwerkseinstellung des Autos in die richtige Entwicklungsrichtung zu gehen, vor allem für das Qualifying. Darüber freue ich mich sehr, auch wenn mir in Q3 ein Fehler unterlaufen ist und ich somit keine schnellere Rundenzeit erzielen konnte. Alles in allem haben wir dennoch Chancen, am Sonntag erneut zu punkten.

We continue to have a strong weekend here, which is nice. My lap was good; not perfect. I think we could have improved time-wise, but not in terms of our position. Nonetheless, we’re improving all the time and these small gains leave us better placed to take advantage of opportunities when they do arise. I’m really excited about the race. When all the penalties are applied we’ll be starting in a good position again, but we’ll need to keep it tidy into turn 1 here to avoid getting squeezed, and damage, like we did in Spa.

I’m pretty happy with my lap and nice to be enjoying a close fight with my team-mate. We have the car in a good place in terms of the set-up, and our grid positions will improve because of the penalties, so the aim is to keep things close with Will and get a good team result again.

“The balance in qualifying was reasonably okay, but I had too much understeer in the car. The first run felt good, and the track usually grips up, so I added some front wing, but it was probably half of what was needed. “It was a reasonable lap, but even if everything had been perfect, we still didn’t have the pace to bridge the three-tenths to make it through into Q2. “It’s a shame, but we always knew this would be a tough race for us. Even with a good start, we won’t be able to hold people back in the race – because we’re not fast enough in a straight line – so they’ll pass us. I’m not sure that tomorrow will be too exciting for us, but we’ll do our best. “The fans have been so supportive at a difficult time – I hope we can repay them soon.”

“Getting knocked out of Q1 was a bit frustrating. However, this is a period of learning for the entire team, and we need to go work through it together. You can’t seize every race weekend as an opportunity, you have to work through them and learn. “We know we’re not in the best position – we’re not competitive right now – so we need to keep working in every area to improve the car. “Nevertheless, this is always a special weekend; the fans have been very friendly and welcoming. It always feels good to race in front of the tifosi.”

It's a bit of a frustrating weekend because of the grid-penalties for tomorrow's race, but at least today we were able to extract the maximum out of the car. Actually the car is feeling great! It's just a shame that we have so many grid-position penalties and not enough power. It's going to be a very interesting race tomorrow and I expect a fun fight at the start, as the last six cars on the grid are myself and Max, both Red Bull cars and two world champions like Button and Alonso. I hope we can still end up fighting for some points even if it's not going to be easy, but that's our target.

I am not sure where we’re going to start from for the race, we’ll see once all the penalties are applied. We need a good race tomorrow to try and make up some places. It’s a long race and we have to keep pushing and fighting to move up the order. We will try and put ourselves in the points, it won’t be easy at this track, but we’ll make the most out of it. We’ll see what we can do.

We had a new engine in the car this morning that lasted a handful of laps. I think the boys in the garage did the world’s quickest engine change to get the car out for Q1. The previous best was about two hours and I think the boys have just done it in 1 hour and 40 minutes. To do one lap was already a victory – the boys are absolute legends. I think everyone cheered when I drove out of the box and I was pretty happy with the lap. We’ll be starting from the back tomorrow and we’ll try to make up some places. The positive aspect is I like overtaking and at this track you can do it, so I’m looking forward to the challenges tomorrow.

I expected it to be a difficult qualifying session today, as we had to change the engine in between sessions. The team worked very hard and did a great job in doing it in time. To be honest, it was a surprise that we were even able to drive out before the end of Q1... and they did it! I'd like to say thank you for the big effort. Ok, we all saw that some bodywork came off the car when I was out on track, but you have to understand that they always try their best, they wanted me to get out there and these things sometimes happen when you are on the limit, fighting against time. Tomorrow's race needs a lot of overtaking again, so I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun. Our race pace doesn't look that bad compared to Red Bull, and we will also fight with the McLaren's at the start. Hopefully we can also challenge Sauber, and then see what else we are capable of doing...Let's see!