Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Das war ein richtig spannendes Qualifying. Jede Millisekunde zählte im Kampf um die Pole. Wir haben vor dem Qualifying einige Veränderungen vorgenommen und das Auto fühlte sich gut an. Entsprechend war ich damit sehr happy. Die Rennpace sieht gut aus und das Team hat auch an diesem Wochenende wieder unglaubliche Arbeit abgeliefert. Ich weiß nicht, ob die Jungs in der Fabrik es noch hören können, aber sie haben einen fantastischen Job gemacht. Ich bin ihnen sehr dankbar dafür, dass wir für dieses Wochenende so einen Schritt vorwärts gemacht und so ein großartiges Paket mitgebracht haben. Damit können wir gegen Ferrari kämpfen. Am Sonntag werden wir so hart wie möglich arbeiten, damit ihr Einsatz nicht umsonst war.

“I don’t know how the mechanics did it”, said Seb after the end of the session. “It’s a lot of work to put together. I want to say a big thanks to the team. This morning we couldn’t do what we wanted to. We know the track and the car, and I know that it is working. In the end we could have got pole position, but I missed the apex at the chicane. I was a bit late and lost a bit of time there. But, overall, putting the car on the front row is a massive success. I think we worked really well. We realized that there was an issue and that we could fix it. Tomorrow, with the race rhythm, it will be fine, because when you get into the pace it is easier. A good start looks always good, so we’ll see, but I am confident for tomorrow and I always try to keep a smile”.

Wir hatten die meiste Zeit an diesem Wochenende die Nase gegen Ferrari vorne. Aber im Q3 legten sie noch einmal eine Schippe nach. Durch den Motorwechsel und den Rückbau auf den alten Motor war ich von Anfang an heute etwas im Hintertreffen. Ich kämpfte während des Qualifyings mit der Stabilität des Hecks. Dadurch war es schwierig, einen guten Rhythmus zu finden. Das war nicht unbedingt eines meiner besten Qualifyings. Aber ich bin mit der Arbeit des Teams zufrieden. Man konnte sehen, dass Lewis heute sehr stark und schnell war. Der Weg bis zur ersten Kurve ist hier kürzer als zuletzt in Sotschi. Aber wir haben in der Vergangenheit bereits gesehen, dass man aus der zweiten Reihe Plätze gutmachen kann. Ich habe von Startplatz drei schon einige gute Starts gehabt. Noch ist alles möglich. Wir sind mit unserer Rennpace happy und blicken dem morgigen Tag zuversichtlich entgegen.

“The car has been working well the whole weekend and I’m happy with that, but I’m disappointed with the qualifying result . Track conditions were a bit tricky today, better than yesterday though. Although I felt I had a lot of speed I struggled here and there, making small mistakes, hitting the kerb, running wide, so I did not put a good lap together. Tomorrow we’ll try again. We can make hundreds of different plans for the race, but there’s no guarantee things will run as we wish. We know the strategies of our two cars, but we don’t know what the others will do. We’ll try to react in the right time and take the right decisions. The length of the DRS area has been increased: we don’t know if it will make a big difference, but it’s probably going to help a little bit”.

“That was a very good qualifying, it went very smoothly and we had no issues and I think the lap was spot on. The car was definitely the best I have had all season and I was very pleased with the balance today. To be just under six tenths back from pole position is a good achievement and we should be very happy with that compared to one and a half seconds back in Sochi. The team has worked really hard to get the updates ready for the car so a massive thank you to them. We have been studying the upgrades all week to understand the package and how they would work, once we got the setup sorted and I was able to get comfortable it resulted in a good combination and successful Qualifying. It is a good step forward and has given us a solid platform to build on for the rest of the season. As always we will keep pushing and try to close the gap even more. It is always nice to come back to Barcelona, I have driven a lot of laps here and it has been kind to me. Like we saw last year, you never know what can happen on race day here, our long run pace looks ok so let’s wait and see.”

“Even with the upgrades we didn’t expect to come here and get pole today and I’m still about a second off the leaders in qualifying, but Max was a bit closer which is good for the team. Personally I was struggling in the last sector, especially at the last two corners. I just wasn’t able to carry enough speed through the chicane which is where I lost most of the time. For the rest of the lap I felt we did all we could and now we have a pretty good balance in the high speed corners. There is more potential in the car which we need to unlock but we have definitely found something this weekend and the gap to the leaders looks to be closing a bit. In the race it would be nice to get on terms with Ferrari and Mercedes but I think the main battle will be between Max and myself. Maybe we will even look at trying something different and splitting the strategy across both cars to put a bit of pressure on the top two teams. It should be an interesting race.”

“Today is one of those days where everything goes right and everything is meeting and exceeding expectations. I’m definitely happy, surprisingly happy, after how our weekend started yesterday, and our qualifying results so far this season. P7 was not something we were even thinking about. “Even if yesterday we didn’t do much running, the car performed quite well and the upgrades were working fine. Today we put everything together, I felt confident in the car – in spite of quite windy and tricky conditions – and I need that confidence to push and gain those couple of tenths in quali. “All the support I get from the people here in Spain always gives me extra motivation, so the extra tenths today were because of them. “I’m so happy for the team because these guys work so hard. Being on the grid tomorrow among the cars that we should always be fighting with to get to the top positions will be a boost for all the guys. “But, the race is tomorrow, and that’s when the points will be given out. We need to try to maintain this position as much as possible with a good strategy executed well, and a good start of course.”

“I’m very happy to be up in P8, although I am a bit disappointed to lose out to Fernando [Alonso] by such a small margin. This result comes as a bit of a surprise after some difficult practice sessions, but I think the team did everything right this afternoon. I think the key to our performance was the way we approached our warm-up lap because we got the tyres in the correct window and found the grip when it mattered. The race is going to be long, but I have a new set of tyres, which we managed to save in Q1, and that should make a difference tomorrow. Overtaking is difficult here, so I hope I can make up some ground at the start: we have some very quick cars behind us who will give us a challenge, but I think we’re on course for a good race.”

It wasn’t a fantastic qualifying, because we knew the best we could achieve today was seventh, and we’re ninth. I struggled with overheating on the tyres throughout qualifying, especially in sector three. It was quite difficult even to get into Q2, and Q3, because the tyres were getting too hot. I was really slow on all of my out-laps, slower than all the other cars, but it just wasn’t working. I then decided to go even slower to see if the tyres could survive for the last sector. It helped, because I picked up some pace, maybe four tenths, and I managed to make it through to Q2. In Q3 I was the slowest car on my out-lap again, but the tyres were too hot in sector three and I lost a bit of time and maybe a couple of positions because of the issue. But, the race is tomorrow. We will try to do the best we can and fight with the teams around us, even the McLaren is in the mix. Fernando did a great job today.

“It’s great to make Q3 again, but I am disappointed not to be higher up the grid. My lap in Q3 was heavily compromised because I didn’t get the DRS to work – I pressed the button too early and the DRS didn’t open. So I missed out on some performance – maybe three tenths, which would have made a big difference. On the other hand, as a team we have both cars inside the top ten and we’ve shown that when it matters we are strong and consistent. That’s encouraging for tomorrow and for the races to come. A good start and strong first lap will be important tomorrow and I’m confident we have the speed to get a good result.”

“It’s always frustrating when you miss out on Q3 by a small amount. You can always say that you had it in there, but you know we’ll get there. Q3 is not far away. I think I nearly maximized everything. There’s always a little bit more you can do, but so can everyone. I don’t think this is our track, really. It’s good to see that the upgrades have worked a little bit. It hasn’t been negative. We just need to build on it and get into Q3. We only need to get one car tomorrow then we’re in the points. Of course, we would like more than one point, but even that would be satisfying to get out of here with something. I’ll cross my fingers for a good start. Hopefully, the temperature will drop and the wind will die down and it’ll make it a bit easier for us.”

"We knew it was going to be very tough to get into Q3, but we were close! It's a shame, because I think we had the right balance on the car and I felt comfortable. For tomorrow, I hope we can have a good race. I always try my best and I will do just that once again, in front of my home crowd. I will try and be aggressive at the start in order to gain positions and strategy can always be an important factor here in Spain, so I think we can put on a good show; I'm looking forward to it. I can also count on all the support from the fans to give me that extra boost!"

“The conditions in qualifying didn’t play in our favour this afternoon. It was very windy and together with the higher temperatures, it has had an impact on our aero performance. We didn’t change a great deal on the car from this morning as it was pretty decent, so the main difference from FP3 was the ambient conditions. I didn’t feel as happy with the car as earlier today, but that said, I’m very happy with the laps I put in, especially the last one in Q2 which was pretty sweet, but that was it for today. We will put our heads down, push hard and aim for a good race tomorrow.”

“I was hoping for more than P14. Without that last spin on the last lap, perhaps we could have done better. Anyway, the car balance has been very tricky and the wind makes it very unpredictable. We struggled with that, so there are a few things we need to work on because I don’t think we’re operating as we should be in some areas. The problem right now is that if I push it to the limit, one corner’s going to be fine but the next it goes away. That’s a big problem for me as I’m struggling to drive it when it’s like this. The car is not reacting as I would like and the grip is very low. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow in the race.”

„Ich bin zufrieden mit Q2. Nach dem Freitagtraining hätten wir das nicht erwarten können. Denn gestern hatten wir einige Schwierigkeiten mit dem Auto und auch noch heute Morgen im dritten freien Training. Deswegen war ich mir nicht sicher, wie es im Qualifying werden würde. Das Wichtigste war, mich darauf zu fokussieren, um das Maximale herauszuholen – und das habe ich geschafft. Auch das Team hat einen guten Job gemacht – vor allem wenn man bedenkt, dass wir hier noch nicht alle Updates am Auto haben.“

„Insgesamt ist es bisher ein positives Wochenende, auch mit dem Hintergrund, dass wir hier noch nicht alle neuen Aero-Teile am Auto haben. Wir hatten schon im dritten freien Training ein gutes Gefühl, das wir dann auch im Qualifying bestätigen konnten. Wir sind hier näher ans Mittelfeld herangerückt, das ist ein gutes Zeichen. Mein Ziel war heute sicherlich Q2. Daher ist es enttäuschend für mich, dass ich das nur um fünf Tausendstel verpasst habe. Trotz allem ist dieses Resultat aus Teamsicht zufriedenstellend. Dennoch ist es aber schade, dass ich bereits nach Q1 ausgeschieden bin.“

“This afternoon was very disappointing, certainly compared to yesterday when we were seventh and eighth. We were definitely missing performance and we need to understand why that has happened. The wind was very strong which certainly affects the cars, so we have to understand why our car seemed more susceptible to this. Now it’s time to work with the engineers in preparation for the best race possible tomorrow.”

It has just been tough for us today and all weekend to get the tyre working properly. The low grip situation is hard for us. But I was actually not too disappointed by my lap. I was three tenths off Felipe and for me at this stage that is not too bad, but it has definitely been tough to get our car where it should be and working the way it normally does. We can only focus on tomorrow now, as today was not what we were hoping for. The pitstop strategy will be a tricky call as it’s difficult to overtake here, but we will look into that tonight and see which way we go.

"The car was very hard to drive and, to be honest, I think we need to change quite a few things... It was already difficult yesterday and today it just continued – I had absolutely no grip and I just can't handle the car well here. For sure it's quite a disappointing situation, but we just need to keep our heads down and analyse why I'm struggling here in Barcelona – it's strange. Starting last there's nothing to lose tomorrow, so we will just need to go forward and see where we end up after having worked hard overnight."

“I don’t really know what happened today. Yesterday I was feeling quite comfortable and confident in the car, happy with the performance, and everything was moving in the right direction to do a bit better today. It’s a shame we weren’t able to translate that in qualifying, because I think the potential was definitely there to get into Q2. It seems like we lost a bit of performance compared to yesterday, and at the moment there’s no real explanation why. But it’s been a difficult start to the season altogether, so hopefully tomorrow we can do something better. “Today I struggled a bit in both sessions – everything felt a little bit more difficult – and I don’t really know why as I say. We need to analyse the data tonight and see what happened and what we can do for tomorrow. It’s not been an easy start to the weekend for the team again and the most important thing is that we get on top of those issues and have some smooth running for the rest of the weekend. I don’t have any targets for tomorrow – just to run a smooth race without any issues. I think strategy will be quite important and we’ll see what’s possible. “Fernando getting through to Q3 shows that the car is going in the right direction. We just need to makes sure we put it all together. Everyone is keeping their head down and trying to push as much as they can to improve this situation, so hopefully we can see some improvements over the next few races.”