Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Das war heute ein kniffliges Qualifying, weil wir gestern nicht viel trainieren konnten. Wir mussten das richtige Setup für diese Strecke raten. Aber das ist uns gelungen und ich hatte eine beinahe perfekte Runde auf meinem ersten Run im Q3. Damit bin ich sehr zufrieden. Ich befinde mich in der bestmöglichen Ausgangslage für morgen. Das ist super. Jetzt hoffe ich auf ein sauberes Rennen. Es wird ein großartiges Duell mit Lewis.

Angesichts der eingeschränkten Trainingszeit befand sich heute jeder in der gleichen Situation. Ich bekam keine Runde zusammen, aber Nico schon. Gratulation an ihn. Aber das Rennen morgen ist lang. Hoffentlich bekomme ich dann meine Chance. Der Weg bis zur zweiten Kurve ist weit. Also werden wir beide die Linie heute Nacht genau studieren. Vielleicht erwische ich einen guten Start. Warten wir es ab. Wir sind nicht viele Runden gefahren, deshalb bin ich mir nicht ganz sicher, wie unsere Pace im Vergleich zu den anderen Teams aussehen wird. Unser Ziel für das Rennen ist wie immer, ein gutes Ergebnis für das Team einzufahren, und genau das haben wir uns vorgenommen.

It was a strong job by the team today – we managed to set-up the car well and maximise our performance. I felt very good in the car all day and managed to get in a rhythm quickly and put in consistent lap times despite the limited number of laps we had completed in practice. Tomorrow is where it really matters but I have put myself in a very good position to capitalise.

I’m not entirely happy: I think that qualifying was close and third place was possible. We started very well in qualifying, needing only one lap in Q1; then… I don’t know, as qualifying progressed I lost a little bit of feeling and didn’t manage to put the lap together in the end. Maybe there’s some ideas why this happened, we’ll have to have a look at that; but to be honest it’s irrelevant because tomorrow it’s a different format, a race with many laps, so we have to see what the day brings. We didn’t have the opportunity to really change much on the car, but I think everybody is in the same situation. Strategy is a bit unknown at that point, but we’ll try to do our best. I think is possible to fight with Williams, I believe we have a very good car so it should be a good race: I’m actually very confident for tomorrow. As for Mercedes, I think they have been more or less one second away but I also think tomorrow it will be a lot closer, I expect that the gap will be smaller, but we’ll see what we can do. If we have the chance, of course we must take it. Obviously it would have been a bit easier if we had been a bit closer to pole position. Let’s see what happens tomorrow. Today, the most important message is that Carlos is fine.

So far, it has been a compromise weekend because of the weather and many other things that happened. Qualifying today was not the easiest one, it was a bit tricky to get temperature in the tires as we wanted in just one lap, because of the cold conditions. When the tires were working, though, the handling of the car was pretty good. In the last run in Q3 there was no time to do more than one lap, the start of the lap was ok but then I went wide and lost significant time. Tomorrow in the race it will be a bit unknown for everybody: obviously, we don’t have enough data from the long runs, so it’s hard to know what is going to happen, but I think we should be ok. I’m sure that when the tires work exactly as we want, the lap times will be a lot different We’ll try to make a good start then hopefully we’ll have a strong race and will be able to take the fight.

I’m very satisfied with sixth place today and our qualifying performance is a great team result. Even though we’ve had limited running here in practice, I’ve had a good feeling with the car – there is a nice balance and it’s giving me confidence. The result today is probably the maximum we could achieve when you look at the cars ahead of us and it means we’re starting in a great position for tomorrow. The race is going to be interesting because there are still some unknowns about how the tyres will behave over long runs and the strategy calls won’t be easy. I’m looking forward to the race and converting this grid position into some good points.

It's always tricky to get the car where you want it to be when you don't do much running in practice, but it's a good result for the team and I believe we got the most we could from the session. This is not an easy track to put a good lap together and getting the tyres to the right temperature is a challenge, so I think we can be pleased with this result. I set my best lap on used tyres, which shows that the supersoft tyres take a long time to reach their best. There are still a few question marks about the performance of the tyres during long runs, which will make it very interesting tomorrow, but I don't expect degradation to be very high. We have a very good chance to be competitive in the race; it will be a tough one but I’m confident we can come away from it with some big points.

It was a pretty good qualifying session for us. We knew the top ten was achievable if everything went right. It was quite a challenging day as we didn’t have so much data to work from so we had to make a few choices during qualifying, but it all seemed to work quite well for us. I’m happy with P8 and I think good things are possible in the race. I was glad to hear that Carlos had the thumbs-up after his accident.

First of all I'd like to say that I'm really happy to hear that Carlos is okay after his crash, that's the most important news of the day. Hopefully he's here tomorrow. I'm very satisfied with my qualifying performance today! It was my first time at this track with low fuel, so I had to get used to that at the same time during the session – I was still learning during qualifying! A P9 is a good result, I'm really pleased. It's difficult to know what to expect for tomorrow's race, as we didn't get a lot of running during the practice sessions and even though our long-runs were not bad, we will need to wait and see... But I'm confident we can have a good race and fight for more points!

We were slower with the set-up we had in Q3 but we’ve learned which direction to go in for tomorrow, so that’s a positive. Even with a good lap, at this track, we were probably looking at ninth for quali at best, so we didn’t lose too much. We’ll do what we can in the race; we have some strong teams around us, but we will push. On a positive note, it’s good to hear that Carlos is doing well.

I felt I did all I could this afternoon. Unfortunately, we only had one quick lap available on thelast set of tyres so we had to go out a little bit later than we would have liked to. On the first timed lap I didn’t feel the tyres were ready and I could easily have improved on a second lap, because that was the pattern, but we just didn’t have time for a second push lap, so it’s a bit disappointing. Starting P11 is okay and at least it gives us a free tyre choice. I will fight hard and hope to finish in the points, which would be a good result. With Carlos, it was a bit scary at first, but then we saw him give the thumbs up. He’s a strong guy and I’m glad he’s okay.

Ein gutes Qualifying mit knappen Zeitabständen zu meinen unmittelbaren Konkurrenten. Nachdem ich im dritten freien Training auf superweichen Reifen mit wenig Sprit nicht zum Fahren gekommen bin, musste ich diesbezüglich schnell meinen Rhythmus finden. Während des Qualifyings gelangen uns die richtigen Einstellungen, um die Reifen zum Arbeiten zu bringen. Somit können wir mit diesem Resultat zufrieden sein. Startplatz zwölf ist eine gute Position, um in die Punkteränge zu fahren.

“This was probably my best qualifying performance of the year. Today, we got into Q2 due to our actual speed, rather than because of the others having any issues. “Q1 was straightforward – I was only a tenth and a half off the top 10. In Q2, it cooled down a lot – my new-tyre run was three-tenths slower than my old-tyre run. That last lap was really low-grip, even though I’d done a couple of warm-up laps beforehand. I think a lot of people struggled to get the temperatures right. “I’m encouraged, because it was always going to be a very tricky weekend for us. Nonetheless, the race will be tougher for us than qualifying was because our deployment isn’t as good as other people’s, so we’ll be affected along the long straights here. In turn, that will affect our fuel consumption – since we use more fuel because we don’t have as much deployment capability. “Still, this is progress.”

For FP3 we had a better feeling with the car so we need to investigate to see why we couldn’t get the speed from the super soft tyres when we needed it. The car didn’t feel too bad, it just wasn’t quick enough when we wanted it. We all expected more from today. The main thing is that Carlos is okay after his incident earlier.

I made a mistake at turn eight in my first timed lap in Q2, and then in my final two attempts I came up against a lot of traffic which lost me a lot of time. On my final run my tyres were gone at the rear and that was the end of my chances. It’s a shame and I’m very disappointed, but I have a quick car around here so we need to have a good strategy and use our pace to move up into the points tomorrow.

Weil wir im dritten Training nicht die geplanten Runden fahren konnten, gingen wir mit etwas Ungewissheit ins Qualifying – und dieses lief dann auch nicht so wie erwartet. Als ich meine erste schnelle Runde fahren wollte, kam die gelbe Flagge. Beim zweiten Versuch traten Schwierigkeiten mit den Reifensensoren auf, daher hatten wir keine genauen Informationen über die Temperaturen. Das ist klarerweise nicht ideal im Qualifying. Alles in allem also kein zufriedenstellender Nachmittag mit einem enttäuschenden Resultat. Wir werden morgen versuchen Plätze gutzumachen.

I’m pretty pleased with how we have ended the day. I didn’t get a good lap on my first run, but it all came together for my second timed lap and I’m pleased to be ahead for the start of tomorrow’s race. We haven’t had much opportunity for preparation this weekend, but this morning I got a long run in and the car feels good. My best wishes to Carlos; I’m pleased he is okay.

I was doing pretty well in qualifying but on the first lap of my second run I went off and flat-spotted my tyres. Then, on my push lap, I made a mistake, which cost me around 0.3s. However, I’m feeling positive for the race and it has been good to get a decent amount of dry running in today. Most importantly today, Carlos is okay. I was very worried for him; he is a good friend. I’m looking forward to seeing him racing when it’s best for him to come back.

“In terms of power effect, this circuit was always going to be tricky for us. Whilst I’d always prefer to start up the front, I’m not really too disappointed with qualifying – with the penalties, I was always going to start last, so we tried to minimise the laps we needed to run today. And going out in Q1 means I haven’t put too many miles on the car. “Let’s see what we can do tomorrow: this race will be important for us as we have some experimental parts we’re testing for next year’s car, and we want to get some information about them. “I’ll go out to enjoy tomorrow’s race – and I’ll be aiming to recover some positions. “Finally, I’m glad to hear that Carlos [Sainz] is okay after his accident – hopefully, we’ll see him back at the track tomorrow.”

Hi everyone! As you can see I am fine. My back and my neck are just a bit sore from the accident, but I'm totally ready. Hopefully tomorrow I will wake up in a good shape and maybe I can try and race – this is definitely the intention! Obviously we need to be cautious... I've always been conscious. As soon as the accident happened I tried to talk to the team on the radio, but it wasn't working and those must have been some scary moments... I'd like to thank everyone for their support, it's really nice to receive all your messages at a moment like this one! I hope to see you all tomorrow out there!