Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Normalerweise bin ich nicht allzu überschwänglich, wenn ich auf der Pole stehe - denn dafür bekommt man am Samstag noch keine Punkte. Aber diesmal war es schon ein cooles Gefühl. Meine letzte Runde fühlte sich absolut fantastisch an und es ist super, wieder von Platz eins zu starten. Ich freue mich auch sehr, dass ich an den letzten paar Rennwochenenden schneller als Lewis war. Zu Beginn der Saison lag er stets diesen kleinen Tick vor mir. Es ist gut, dass ich das nun umdrehen konnte. Dies ist die beste Ausgangslage für das Rennen morgen. Ich möchte hier gewinnen, um das Jahr mit einem Erfolgserlebnis zu beenden und den Jungs in der Box einen richtig guten Grund für eine großartige Saisonabschlussfeier morgen Abend zu geben.

ch kam das gesamte Wochenende nicht so gut mit dem Auto zurecht. Deshalb habe ich viel verändert, um diese Dinge zu umgehen. Aber ich fühle mich immer noch nicht richtig wohl damit. Ich habe heute Abend alles gegeben. Aber Nico war einfach richtig schnell und hat im Q3 eine großartige Leistung gezeigt. Aus diesem Grund war ich nicht so überrascht, dass er letztlich eine bessere Runde als ich hinbekommen hat. Zuletzt hatte ich nicht gerade meine beste Qualifying-Serie, aber ich konnte dennoch drei davon in Siege umwandeln. Es gibt also immer noch eine Chance, obwohl es hier besonders schwierig ist, einem anderen Auto im ersten Sektor zu folgen. Ich werde hart daran arbeiten, morgen einen großartigen Start zu haben und mich von dort zu verbessern. Ich erhalte hier an diesem Wochenende viel Unterstützung und mein 44. Sieg ist noch immer in Reichweite. Entsprechend werde ich morgen hart dafür arbeiten.

It has been a nice Saturday, my car has been feeling pretty good the whole day. This morning I only struggled on some laps, but overall the behavior was the way I wanted and when it’s like that it’s a lot easier to put the lap together. The Mercedes have been very quick today and yesterday, in the lap times they are a bit faster than us, but the race is tomorrow, so let’s see. I did my maximum today. Tomorrow is another day, we can only do our best and see where we’ll end up. We’ll try to make a good start and then see how it pans out, going from there and making the right decisions.

Fourth place on the grid is a great result for us and I’m very pleased with our strong performance all the way through qualifying. We’ve made some good decisions this weekend with the changes we have made to the car and it’s taken us in a very positive direction. I think the analysis we carried out after the weekend in Sao Paulo has really paid off and we’ve learned a huge amount. All of my laps this evening were very clean and tidy, and we managed to get the maximum from the car. The challenge tomorrow will be keeping some very quick cars behind me, but I also think we have a good chance to make up some positions at the start. I have the confidence in the car to really push and there is definitely the potential to come away with a great result this weekend. In many ways it’s a shame that tomorrow is the final race of the season because the car is working very well at the moment and I’m enjoying the racing so much.

I’m happy with the session; I think we’ve done really well. We were able to improve in every session and the weekend so far has been pretty smooth. Our lap time kept on getting better and better and that’s when you know the session’s gone well. You find a few tenths each run. Last year, one of my best qualifying performances was here and today sort of backed that up. Our target for tomorrow is definitely to keep the Williams behind us and find a way around Perez. He was really quick today. I hope they fade a bit in the race. It should be interesting tomorrow. We won’t have an easy time passing them on track but at least it’s a track where you can overtake. The DRS zones are good and you can definitely have a go.

We expected slightly more from qualifying, but I think we have a competitive car for tomorrow to fight with Force India, Red Bull and hopefully Ferrari. The balance felt good today but we were just missing some speed, as we have been all weekend. It should be an exciting race and we will fight to the end for every position to finish the season on a high.

It was a good qualifying session for the team, although I feel I could have been higher up the grid. I was pretty happy with my laps, especially the one in Q3, so to find myself in seventh actually feels a little bit disappointing. We need to look at the data and figure out where we lost time and what we can do to recover it. Looking ahead to the race, we’ve been working hard to improve our race pace and hopefully the changes we have made will pay off tomorrow. The car is quick on the straights and the balance has felt good from the start of the weekend. Starting from the fourth row, we have every opportunity to score a good result tomorrow.

The lap wasn't too bad, but the times were very tight at the top. The Force India was very strong and the two positions in front of me were split by just a tenth. Our long run pace is good, but the teams in front are strong so the race could be tough, a hard battle. But we have the opportunity to improve as there will be a few teams with similar pace to us in the fight.

Not running in FP3 unfortunately comprised our day and the car didn’t feel right. We were hoping it wouldn’t affect us too much this evening, but it did and I just didn’t feel comfortable out there. Not running in FP3, after the small issues which we had yesterday, meant we had to go into qualifying a bit blind. Luckily we did a few long runs in FP2 yesterday which was quite useful and will be helping us tomorrow. We will try to make up some places then, so hopefully we will be able to take something out of it.

I'm very pleased and happy with today, especially after such a difficult day yesterday! I definitely needed a clean Saturday. I managed to build up my confidence and set-up my car as I wanted during what was a very smooth FP3. Today's qualifying was tough, as I had to get used to the twilight conditions and get the braking references right – something I wasn't able to do yesterday in FP2 because of the lack of running. It was important for me to have a good qualifying here and I have to say I'm very satisfied with P10. I was able to stay calm and did a very good lap when it mattered. It wasn't an easy day to get into Q3 but we managed it and it feels good!

It wasn't the easiest of days, but we tried to make the most out of it and we can be happy with our result. In today's qualifying session I think we maximised the potential of the car. I think all the runs were very good, except for the last one in Q2 – we have a certain way to prepare for a lap and I got caught in traffic so I had to back off, losing tyre temperature, and then you don't have the confidence to brake hard into the first corner and lose one and a half tenths... But at the end of the day a P11 is a good position to fight from in tomorrow's race – I'm the first one with new tyres so it looks promising, as this track is quite hard on the tyres. I think we have good race pace, so it will be interesting tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it!

“We changed the set-up overnight and everything really worked well. In fact, the car feels the best it has all year, which is always promising at the end of a long season. “My lap in Q1 was good; it was good in Q2 too, but I think the others got their laps together and put us in our place, which was 12th. So it’s disappointing to end up outside the top 10, particularly as we felt we had a fighting chance of getting through to Q3 for the first time this year. “However, I didn’t leave anything on the table and definitely maximised everything I had; I just couldn’t find the grip on that final run in Q2. “The race will be more difficult than qualifying, but we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

We expected a difficult qualifying session so P13 is not so bad. You need a lot of downforce around here and that’s an area where we’re a bit lacking, especially at this time of the season. It’s the final race of the year tomorrow so we’ll do everything we can to get a decent result.

Ich denke, wir haben uns gegenüber den Trainings verbessert. Dennoch ist diese Startposition nicht ideal. Mit den Änderungen am Auto gegenüber dem Freitag bin ich dennoch zufrieden. Immerhin konnte ich in Q1 eine ganz passable Rundenzeit fahren. In Q2 unterlief mir in der zweiten Runde ein kleiner Fehler in Kurve 1, der Zeit kostete. Alles in allem gesehen, spürte ich bezüglich der Reifen-Performance doch einen Unterschied zwischen Q1 und Q2. Warum wir in Q2 dabei etwas an Zeit einbüssten, müssen wir noch analysieren. Für das Rennen gilt die Zielsetzung, Rang acht in der Konstrukteure-Wertung und Platz 13 in der Fahrer-Weltmeisterschaft zu halten. Dafür werde ich alles geben.

Nothing wrong with the car, we thought that the lap I had on the Soft (harder) tyres was quick enough, but in the end it was not. There was also a car in front which shouldn’t have been there. So we misjudged the situation, a small mistake with big consequence, but the race is tomorrow and lots can happen. It is good that Kimi is in the front, we have a quick car and it is possible to overtake here, even if only tomorrow we’ll be able to tell how much it is. You can spend a lot of time speaking about what we did wrong, but in the end we know, so now we need to move forward.

“Our car has performed better in every session than we initially anticipated. So it was cruel luck to get a puncture at possibly the most critical point of the whole weekend; the final run of Q1. “That was unfortunate, because we’d been looking very competitive, and our car seems to be performing quite well around here. “The race will be difficult owing to our straight-line speed deficit, but I’ll be aiming to make a good start, run a good strategy, and make up some positions. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

Das waren bisher schwierige Tage für mich beim Saisonfinale. Wir hatten damit zu kämpfen, bei meinem Auto die Balance zu finden, die mir am Besten liegt. Fürs Qualifying dachte ich, dass wir diesbezüglich in die richtige Richtung arbeiten. In Q1 auf meinem ersten superweichen Reifensatz machte ich in der zweiten schnellen Runde einen Fahrfehler. Beim folgenden Versuch konnte ich mich dann bei den bis dahin besten Streckenbedingungen nicht mehr verbessern, weil plötzlich Schwierigkeiten aufgetreten sind und ich deswegen meine Runde abbrechen musste. Natürlich ist dieses Resultat enttäuschend, doch ich denke, dass wir bezüglich der Performance des Autos einen Schritt vorwärts gemacht haben. Das ist das Positive fürs Rennen. Ich werde alles versuchen, um Plätze gutzumachen.

That was very frustrating, but it’s the end of the season and I think my gearbox has been around the world about three times already! I’ll be doing everything I can tomorrow; I’ve asked the engine guys to turn it up to eleven so let’s see what we can do!

I’m really happy with my qualifying today. Looking at the weekend so far, this has been one of my strongest races all season. As soon as I got here I felt really comfortable with the car and it’s nice to be at a track where I’ve had previous F1 experience. I’m very excited about tomorrow now; the pace is going to be good and I’m really hoping to end the season on a high. I think we’re pretty on top of it to be honest.

A disappointing qualifying for me, I flat spotted my tyre on my quick lap, as I haven’t had the confidence in my brakes all weekend. I was also blocked on my other lap, so overall not a great qualifying for me. It’s a shame, as this is the final race, but I will look forward to tomorrow now and the opportunities it may bring.