Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Of course there are no points given today, but for the team, for all of us, this is a fantastic result! We had been waiting for so long for this pole to arrive, not just the team, but myself too. Perhaps I could have aborted the last attempt, but there was no much point in doing so, because I did not know what the others were doing and I felt fantastic, so I pushed to the end. Now I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow, knowing that it will be very difficult and challenging to master all the conditions that you experience in a race. But we are starting from the perfect spot. I wouldn’t mind to pull away at the start, but it’s going to be a very long race. There are so many small decisions you have to take, and it’s easy to focus on the big result and neglect the small details… So we’ll have to focus on tomorrow, because so many things can happen on the way to the chequered flag, with the safety car and so on, as we’ve seen so often in the past. Hopefully we can have the same speed tomorrow, and then it could be a very good day

It’s really nice to be back up here on the front row; it’s been a while and it’s a bit of coincidence that it’s Seb and I together, but it should be a good race. Qualifying was exciting and to have no Mercedes up here is a surprise, so we will definitely try to capitalize on that - it would be nice to be back in the press conference tomorrow! I’m really happy for the team as we have definitely made a load of progress, since Silverstone and particularly since Budapest. Today’s result backs up the confidence I had in the car. We’ll be aiming for the win, as that’s where the points are and the champagne is. Seb put himself out of reach, so we are second best for today and we’ll try and go one better tomorrow. It’s always a challenge here and you need to have confidence in the car, because it’s hot and physical and a test for the driver which makes it fun. I’m happy with the way the weekend has gone so far.

I’m happy to finish third considering the difficult day I’ve had compared to yesterday. I have been struggling all day with the set up of my car, finding the grip and the balance. It was difficult to make the car work as I wanted. We always try to do our best in a race weekend and here it seems to work. Some places seem to favor one team and some others other teams, this time we have been having a pretty ok weekend so far. Our aim is to improve for the race, tomorrow we’ll see how strong our opponents are, we’ll try to do our best and hopefully have a stronger race as a team.

I’m happy with today’s qualifying. I think it’s a good place to start the race tomorrow. Obviously as a driver you always want more but we’ll do our best to get as many points in the race as we can. The red cars are looking strong but we will take the fight to them during the race. It’s a long race and we will have to be patient. The chassis is behaving really well and the team have done a great job with the car.

Es ist wie es ist. Ich hatte heute Spaß, aber uns fehlte einfach die Pace. Wir waren von der Pace der Ferrari nicht überrascht, da es das gesamte Wochenende so war. Wir kennen den Grund noch nicht, warum wir heute nicht so schnell waren. Offensichtlich haben wir die Reifen nicht so zum Arbeiten bekommen wie alle anderen. Das müssen wir uns ansehen. Im Vergleich zu vor zwei Wochen haben wir am Auto keine Performance verloren. Aber die Jungs vorne waren heute einfach zu schnell. Morgen wird es hart. Es ist hier schwierig zu überholen, aber ich bin trotzdem gespannt. Ich werde hart pushen und alles geben, um Plätze gutzumachen.

Die Pace der Ferrari ist sehr beeindruckend und es ist echt frustrierend, von Platz sechs zu starten. Ich hatte in den Kurven keinen Grip. Das war sehr seltsam. Aber morgen ist noch viel möglich. Zunächst werde ich daran arbeiten, Lewis zu überholen. Es ist für mich sehr wichtig, vor ihm ins Ziel zu kommen. Soweit wir es am Freitag gesehen haben, scheinen die Spitzenleute auch viel schneller mit viel Benzin zu sein. Ich probierte einige Dinge beim Setup aus, aber wir haben nicht herausgefunden, warum wir an diesem Wochenende so langsam sind. Es ist komisch. Bis hierhin waren wir auf jeder Strecke schnell. Aber jetzt hierher nach Singapur zu kommen, und so einen Abstand zu den schnellsten Autos zu sehen, ist nicht gut.

Given Friday, it's a good starting position for tomorrow. We always knew it was going to be challenging for us here and we improved from practice to get both cars inside the top 10. I'm pleased with my lap, I think I got everything I could from the car so it's a good result. This is a race where anything can happen and we are going to be there so everything is still open.

I'm satisfied with today's P8. The most important is that we are in front of our main competitors, Lotus and Force India. I have to say that I'm really happy with my lap, especially after FP3, where we were struggling a bit with the tyres, but we managed to turn it around very quickly and have a very good qualifying session. We really maximised today's result. Now I'm really looking forward to the race tomorrow, there will definitely be some good fights!

It wasn't an easy qualifying session. I made a mistake in Q3 and lost time that would have put me a few positions further up. We only had one set of new tyres for Q3 so I tried everything I could, maybe too much. The position at the end could have been much better, but this is not a fantastic track for us so we'll concentrate on getting the best we can from the race tomorrow.

We had to work hard to get into Q3, both on the track in the session and working with my engineers beforehand. It’s something of a surprise that it all worked and we made it into Q3, so I’m pretty happy. I was pushing really hard out there today; I was getting up close and personal with some of the walls, but I think my wife will forgive me!

It’s a bit disappointing not to make the top ten, but at the same time I’m confident we can have a good race from P11. For whatever reason we didn’t have the harmony or performance we expected and I wasn’t as happy with the balance as I was yesterday. I was chasing the set-up in final practice and we made some changes before qualifying, but we still couldn’t find the sweet spot. The car was quite snappy with some oversteer and it wasn’t easy to get a tidy lap together. For tomorrow, the strategy decisions will be critical and we’ve seen over the years how unpredictable this place can be. It’s always a tough race with high tyre degradation, especially the rears, and all the teams around us look quite evenly matched. We need to keep out of trouble and make the right decisions with the strategy.

“I think this is the position we deserved today. Okay, without the yellow flag, we may have been able to manage 11th and 12th, half a second from the top 10, but not better than that. “This weekend has been very good for me, though, very different from Monza and Spa, I’ve always felt comfortable and competitive here, and tomorrow we’ll start in a good position from which to score points. The race here is quite tough and demanding, on the mechanical side and on the driver’s side. There’s no room for mistakes, so we have to run a perfect race tomorrow and hopefully be in the points. “Overtaking here is very difficult, so positions are mainly decided by where you start and by your strategy. There are always Safety Cars here, and you need some luck with that too.”

I am disappointed as I think Q3 was possible. The yellow flag at the end of Q2 meant I couldn’t finish what would have been my best lap, which is a shame, but sometimes things don’t go your way. I don’t think P13 reflects our true pace because we’ve done a very good job so far this weekend and we are continuing to take big steps forward. For tomorrow, there is plenty to fight for and it’s a long race on a street circuit where anything can happen. Starting in the middle of the pack will be a challenge because overtaking is not easy here, but we will try and overcome this with a good strategy. We will need to be ready to maximise every opportunity.

A disappointing way to end what was being a good qualifying session. We knew we had a car good enough to get into Q3 – my lap was actually three or four tenths quicker than the limit to get into the top ten... It's a shame that I didn't know that when I was in the car. I thought it was going to be very tight so I was pushing to the limit and unfortunately made a mistake, touching the wall. It's something to learn from and now we just need to look forward to tomorrow, that's when the points are given.

“We were always going to have high targets coming here off the back of two difficult races – you’ve got to think positive. But even if we’d got absolutely everything together, it would still have been difficult. “Even so, 15th isn’t what I’d hoped for, and I’m sure 12th isn’t what Fernando had ideally hoped for either. “It was a pretty tough qualifying session, all in all. I got understeer when I put new tyres on, and you just can’t put enough front wing on to help that. And then I got the yellow flag at the end of the lap, so I had to lift, which scuppered my chances of doing better. I wouldn’t have got through to Q3, but I would have been a bit higher up. “So tonight I’ll have a nice chilled evening and look forward to tomorrow. It’s quite an unusual circuit here – you can overtake – so we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Wir hatten uns im Qualifying Startplätze erwartet, die um einige Ränge weiter vorne sind. Ich hatte damit zu kämpfen, die Reifen auf die optimale Temperatur zu bringen. Das war mein grösstes Handicap auf den superweichen Reifen. Zudem hatten wir Schwierigkeiten, eine gute Balance des Autos zu finden. Es sah so aus, dass andere Fahrer mehr von der immer besser werdenden Reifenhaftung profitieren würden. Und natürlich war es am Ende von Q1 sehr knapp. Jetzt fokussiere ich mich auf das Rennen.

Nach dem starken, dritten Training war mein Resultat im Qualifying enttäuschend. Da hatten wir uns mehr erwartet. Obwohl in Q1 letztlich nicht viel gefehlt hat. Unglücklich war, dass Konkurrenten meine Performance ein wenig beeinträchtigten. Nun müssen wir analysieren, was wir hätten anders machen sollen – und daraus Lehren ziehen. Klar, unsere Startpositionen sind für ein Rennen auf einem Stadtkurs nicht ideal. Aber morgen ist ein neuer Tag, mit neuen Chancen.

It was a tough session and we weren’t really able to get the maximum out of the tyres, which is something we’ve struggled with all weekend. Lack of grip was the main problem out there and it certainly made things slippery for us. Tomorrow’s the race and we can certainly recover some positions, especially as we will have fresh tyres relative to the cars in front of us.

If I’m honest, this weekend has been the most difficult of the season so far. We got off to a good start in FP1, but then I made a mistake at the start of FP2 and it has really set me back. I haven’t raced here in Singapore before, so it was important to do as many laps as possible in FP3. We managed a long run this morning, which helped me reacquaint myself with the circuit. I knew that I had the time in me and then I had the opportunity to push in the last stint. I’m now a lot more optimistic about tomorrow and looking forward to racing here for the first time.

I’m pretty comfortable with the car and the circuit, but my target was to qualify ahead of my new team-mate, so anything short of that is disappointing. I was quick all morning, and in my first qualifying run, but I didn’t make the most of my second run; we didn’t improve enough. As for tomorrow, it’s going to be a tough race but I’ve waited a long time for this moment and I’m very excited to get started.