Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Es war ein großartiges Gefühl, endlich eine Runde zusammenzubekommen. Das stimmt mich richtig happy. Wenn du solch eine Performance abrufen kannst, gibt dir das viel Selbstvertrauen. Nico war an diesem Wochenende sehr schnell, manchmal bis zu zwei Zehntel oder mehr. Ich konnte in den Daten sehen, wo ich die Zeit verlor. Also musste ich versuchen, sie auf der Strecke aufzuholen. Es ist ein unglaublich befriedigendes Gefühl, diese Aufgabe zu bewältigen. Ich bin dem Team wahnsinnig dankbar. Sie haben über Nacht hart gearbeitet, um das Auto für mich so hinzubekommen. Das ist jetzt meine dritte Pole im dritten Anlauf, wenn ich im Qualifying meine Runden fahren konnte. In diesem Jahr hatte ich noch kein richtiges Rennen gegen Nico. Also hoffe ich, dass morgen der Anfang dafür ist. Das Überholen ist hier sehr schwierig. Deshalb ist die Strategie ebenso wichtig wie der Umgang mit den Reifen. Die Kräfte zehren auf dieser Strecke sehr an den Reifen. Aus diesem Grund muss man die Balance richtig hinbekommen und es bis ins Ziel durchziehen.

Lewis hat heute eine bessere Leistung gezeigt. Aber erst morgen kommt es drauf an. Gleich am Anfang wartet eine große Gelegenheit auf mich: Ich hatte in diesem Jahr bislang einige gute Starts, Lewis hat hingegen in dieser Saison noch nicht in der ersten Kurve geführt. Vielleicht ergibt sich auch im Rennen eine Möglichkeit. Die Reifennutzung wird eine Rolle spielen und die richtige Strategie wird ebenfalls entscheidend sein. Ich erwarte also ein richtig interessantes Rennen und freue mich auf den Kampf. Wir müssen aber auch Red Bull im Auge behalten. Sie sind hier überraschenderweise stärker als Ferrari.

“Firstly I’m really happy to be back in the top three on Saturday and will try and be back here tomorrow! I’m happy for both of us (Max and I) to be in front of the Ferraris, we are both on the second row, which is pretty awesome. It took a bit of time to come together, but in Q3 I knew I had one lap and knew I had the pace and where I could do it; it was about putting it all together – up until then I hadn’t, but Q3 is what counts and I did it, so I’m really happy.”

"I enjoyed the qualifying, it was getting better with every lap. For me the target today was to enjoy myself and I had a good feeling in the car. I focused on what I had to do and it worked. I’m happy, I didn’t expect to adapt to the car so quickly. I didn’t expect to be on the second row, so it’s a positive feeling. We are close to a podium and hopefully we can keep our positions in tomorrow’s race.”

“It was not an easy day: we did our best, but the result is a bit disappointing. We seemed to struggle quite a lot in the last sector and I’m not surprised we were losing a lot of time there. Before qualifying we made some changes to my set-up and the car felt better, but it was not easy to get the laps that we wanted and make the handling exactly as we desired. The car felt ok yesterday, today I was quicker, but the wind has been turning around a bit, making some places quite tricky. My last run was better than so far today, but obviously it’s not where we want to be. Our rivals did a better job today, we have to keep working and improving and see what we can do tomorrow in the race.”

“I think every day can be tough but for sure I didn’t expect to be that far off, especially because this morning we had a good rhythm. I didn’t get hold of the car, I didn’t get the feeling that I had earlier today, and couldn’t nail the laps. I don’t think that it is a surprise, if you don’t get it together here it can be quite costly, and we know this. I think the gap to Mercedes is bigger than it has been all weekend. So clearly we didn’t get it right. As for tomorrow’s race, for sure the further up you qualify, the better: this rule applies everywhere. We will focus on the start, first lap and then there is a long race, and lot of things we can do. Usually there are several pit-stops here so we can play with the strategy and pass people that are slower than us. I think the car is quicker than P6, so I have high hopes for tomorrow.”

I was hoping for a bit better result, but it was a good lap so I am pleased with how we did in Q3. It’s a shame about Felipe. Tomorrow, we need to set the bar high and aim to be in the top five in the race. It’s possible with a good start and our strategy, so we’ll try to make up as many places as we can.

"I'm very happy with today's qualifying! We've been strong the whole weekend so far and today's P8 was the maximum we could hope for, and we did it – I'm very satisfied with my lap in Q3. Tomorrow's race will be a very interesting one, and to start from the fourth row in front of my home crowd is something I'm looking forward to. To race on home soil is always special, something that I've been dreaming of since I was four years old, when I started to watch Formula 1. To finally be here, living the dream, is an awesome feeling and I will try and enjoy myself and put on a good show for all the fans out there."

“I’m very happy to be starting ninth. This track has traditionally been a difficult one for us, so to come here with our upgrade and make Q3 feels pretty good. I think there was the potential to be even faster on my Q3 lap, but I’m still happy with the result. I expect us to be strong in the race and we have a good track position, which is important on this track where it’s never easy to overtake. In the first stint, the cars starting just outside the top ten on fresh tyres will be a threat, but I am confident we can make a good start and stay ahead. Strategy will be important, as well as tyre management, but it’s not easy if you get involved in battles that take the life out of your tyres. If we can come away with a good number of points it will be a nice reward for the team’s hard work and effort recently.”

“Today is the first time in a long while that I haven’t watched Q3 on television! “And it’s nice to be part of the show. This is new-shape McLaren-Honda’s first time in Q3 – but, in truth, we probably deserved this result a couple of races ago. “But never mind that now: let’s just enjoy it before we turn our attention to tomorrow and look at how we can convert it into world championship points. That’ll require some thought because, for the first time this year, we’ll be starting on used Q2 tyres – we don’t have a free choice, which is a slight handicap that we’ll look to recover somehow. “Nonetheless, we should be thinking about moving forwards tomorrow – and doing that here is usually all about the start and the pit-stops. Put it this way: I don’t think we’ll see too much overtaking tomorrow. That means we really need to focus on the start, and then look after our tyres because degradation is likely to be a factor. “There’s still a long way to go, but this is a good step.”

“It’s always a bit disappointing to miss out on Q3 by just one hundredth of a second, but on the other hand starting from P11 gives us the chance to explore the strategy options with a free choice of tyre for the first stint. We brought a big upgrade here this weekend and generally it’s working well, but I’m not totally comfortable in the car and I’m still chasing the balance. I feel quite optimistic about tomorrow because our long run pace looked solid and we’ve got a good chance of scoring some points.”

“This result has been a long time coming for the McLaren-Honda team. Fair play to Fernando – he’s been very quick all weekend, and this afternoon’s Q3 success is great for the team. “Having said that, merely getting into Q3 isn’t where we want to be as a team, but we did a good job today. And I hope it’s put a smile on everyone’s faces. “However, it’s been a tough weekend for me. My car has been suffering from a loose-feeling rear end, which isn’t how I like it to feel because it means I can’t fully commit into corners. I tried my best, but driving around that handling characteristic has never been my strong point. “Still, I adapted reasonably well to it this weekend, and, to end up just-one-and-a-half tenths off Fernando’s time is the best it’s been all weekend. “I’ll start tomorrow’s race on new tyres too, so I’m not too upset.”

"I'm still getting used to the team and the car, so it hasn't been the easiest of qualifying sessions. To be out in Q2 isn't what one wants to see, but the general feeling is positive, I feel better and better in the car and in the future we will do better – I'm just not a very patient guy! We need to analyse and find where we could've done better to improve very quickly for the next races. Starting in P13 is not too bad, so we will do our best to score some points tomorrow – the race is very long, let's see where we end up."

“I think we did a great job and everyone worked very hard overnight to get a better car. It’s very close and very tight in terms of lap times. We couldn’t make it to Q3, but we weren’t that far off. We need to find some more speed but, generally, I’m very pleased with the way we worked. I’m very proud of all the guys.”

“I think we got everything out of the car, and we did a good job as a team to maximise our potential. I think fifteenth is absolutely the best that we could do today. Looking at it like that, it’s been a good day but I’m certainly looking forward to improving over the coming races. For tomorrow, we have to be ready for any opportunities that present themselves. I’m aiming to stay out of trouble and gain all the positions available.”

“It was a great effort from the whole team to recover after the problems from yesterday. Today, I really enjoyed extracting the maximum on every run. I found a little inconsistency between the different sets of tires, but that’s something we can look into and try to improve to really get the best out of our setup. Now I’m looking ahead to the race tomorrow and fighting for positions. I’m excited to get back out there.”

“It was disappointing to be so close to getting into Q2 but just being pipped at the final moment. The car’s clearly improved and felt good, I felt happy with my lap from behind the wheel but we were not quite where we needed to be come the end of the session. There’s a little bit more time in the car; let’s try to make some places in the race tomorrow.”

I’m so disappointed about what happened. I had traffic on my first run so I couldn’t do a clean lap. We didn’t have time to go out on another set of tyres. Traffic or problems on the lap can happen, but we still need to ensure we can react accordingly. It’s a long race tomorrow though, so we still need to aim to challenge for points.

“It’s been a tough weekend for me. I have been struggling with the balance of the car since the first practice session. We have been working really hard to get a better balance for the car, and I felt we took steps in the right direction. Now in qualifying I felt more comfortable in the car, and I am satisfied with my driving. I think the result is the maximum considering our car’s current package. Unfortunately, it is not better than 19th position. I hope we can be stronger in the future.”

“It was not an easy qualifying for us. We were expecting to face some difficulties here. But overall we did a good job with regard to the set-up of the car, especially when it comes to race preparation. In qualifying I managed to have a good lap on the first set of soft tyres. During the second run I struggled with some oversteer, so I could not improve my time. I think the results are the best we could have achieved today, as the other teams are further ahead of us. It is a long race tomorrow; a lot can happen, especially with regards to the tyre degradation.”

“I think our qualifying performance was the maximum for us today. Our new developments are working well but even so we knew this track would not be our strongest because you really need a lot of downforce here and that’s an area where we still need to keep making improvements. Also it appears that we haven’t solved our degradation problems fully. I think this is where we are at this event but there will be some better tracks coming soon for us.”

“I’m disappointed today as we pushed really hard in practice and qualifying. We’ve definitely seen some improvements with the new parts we have for this race but not enough to get ahead of the teams we’re competing against at this particular circuit. Still, I’m very focused on tomorrow and after the frustration of Russia I’m looking forward to actually racing, then I hope we can have a stronger day.”