Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

ch bin richtig happy und dankbar. Die vergangenen Wochen waren super und ich konnte die positive Energie aus meinem Urlaub in das Wochenende mitnehmen. Bis ich über die Linie gefahren war und die Pole sicher hatte, merkte ich gar nicht, dass ich Michaels Rekord egalisiert hatte. Es ist verrückt, wenn ich daran denke, dass ich 1996, als ich elf Jahre alt war, hierher kam, um Michael zuzusehen – und jetzt habe ich seinen Rekord eingestellt. Es ist für mich eine Ehre, mit ihm gemeinsam da oben zu stehen und es ist ein unglaubliches Gefühl, so stark in die zweite Saisonhälfte zu starten. Ich hatte an diesem Wochenende keine richtig schlechten Runden. Aber morgen wird es eng zugehen. Die Rennpace von Ferrari sah gestern gut aus, also wird es morgen wohl sehr viel enger sein. Der Weg zur ersten Kurve ist kurz, aber die Pole ist immer noch die beste Ausgangslage. Ich werde versuchen, das morgen umzusetzen.

“I had a very good feeling already in Q1. During Q2, the main task was to get through and then in Q3 I was just about ok with the first run, but struggling a bit. However, my last run was better. I am happy with today’s result. I think we achieved something that some people didn’t expect from us. The pace was very good and I am really looking forward to tomorrow. It will be a long race with a lot of laps and a long track where more or less everyone has had problems with the tires during the weekend. As for the extension of my contract with Ferrari, I am very happy for that. I love this team. Two years ago we said we wanted to get back on top and I think we are on the right road. We aren’t where we want to be yet, but we are striving for the top. I am very happy we keep working together. I want to achieve a lot with Ferrari and think it’s the same on the other side. And I want to keep racing in red!”

Zunächst möchte ich Lewis zu seiner 68. Pole gratulieren. Das ist eine Mega-Leistung. Leider hatte ich heute nicht die Pace, um die Pole zu holen. Ich weiß nicht genau, woran das gelegen hat. Ich bin ein wenig verwirrt, warum ich nicht näher dran war. Jetzt müssen wir uns die Daten genauer ansehen, um Antworten darauf zu erhalten. Die Balance des Autos fühlte sich gut an, aber mir fehlte der Grip. Ich hatte vor allem in den schnellen Kurven im zweiten Sektor zu kämpfen. Mit mehr Sprit an Bord fühlte ich mich viel wohler im Auto. Das ist ein gutes Zeichen für morgen. Mit dem 2017er Auto in Spa zu fahren ist mega – es ist so schnell. So etwas habe ich vorher noch nie erlebt. Wir starten beide aus den Top-3, somit werden wir als Team weiter versuchen, unser Ziel eines Doppelsieges zu erreichen.

“It was a messy qualifying: all the way through the session I had some vibrations in the car that kept coming and going. It’s hard to know how much they affected the lap time, but for sure it did not help. It’s very disappointing because so far the weekend had gone very smoothly. I felt we had all the tools to do well, the car was good and we had the speed. In the last run I was off to a good start, but then I started struggling with the tire temperatures and made a mistake, got sideways at turn 9 and it was pretty much the end of it. Fourth position is not a disaster but it is far from what I wanted. It’s unfortunate, wrong time wrong place, but tomorrow is another day. It’s going to be quite tricky with the tires for everybody: hopefully we’ll have a straightforward race and make the right decisions”.

“I was really happy with my lap in Q3, it couldn’t have been better to be honest as I feel I put everything together and got the best performance out of the car possible. I think the lap felt better than P5, last year I was P2 and I think it felt just as good this year, but I’m happy with the result anyway and would say it was a perfect qualifying. I am positively surprised we are so close to Ferrari, Lewis was way ahead but in the race I think we can be closer so perhaps a good result is possible. Our strength is in sector 2 so we will work even harder there to improve a bit but in general the balance of the car was great and that allowed me to execute a very good Qualifying session. Although the car felt good today I still think we need a bit of luck to do something special tomorrow. For now it looks like it will be a dry race so let’s hope that changes overnight and I think then we can fight properly. On my fast laps I was concentrating too much but on my in lap I could see the orange crowd and smoke from all the fans, this is amazing to see. As I left the pit lane there was a guy on the fence in all orange waving me on, it’s awesome.”

“We were a bit off in Q1 but I knew there was more time and then in Q2 we got closer to the pace that we needed. Unfortunately in Q3, when you really start to get everything out of it, we couldn’t get much more. I felt like if I pushed more in one part of the track it killed me in another part so I didn’t really feel we had the car to complete one lap at 100%. I just felt a little bit limited with the balance. But I’m going to be optimistic and say, if that’s the case maybe that means we have got a more consistent car for the race. If we’re not getting the peak out of the tyre maybe we can sustain a relatively good pace for longer than the others, so that’s what I’m betting on.”

“I’m very pleased with qualifying as I haven’t been able to get the set-up exactly where I wanted it, yet I could still get a P7 time when it mattered. We were still working on set-up today as I haven’t been able to find that sweet spot where everything’s working at its best. I still don’t think we found the best solution, yet I was very positively surprised that we could squeeze a P7 out of it. It’s a good effort from the team; tomorrow’s going to be a full race. It’ll be head down and pedal hard.”

“I am a bit disappointed with my lap in Q3. I was close to Raikkonen in sector one, but when he aborted his lap in sector two I ended up being too close to him. As a result, I lost of a lot of aerodynamic load and that cost me a couple of tenths. I believe we had the pace to be ahead of the Renault today, but I still think we are in a good position for tomorrow. Spa is a place where anything can happen so it will be important to stay out of trouble and take the opportunities that come our way. The first lap can be really messy: not just in turn one but also at Les Combes, when the pack bunches up again. I think we can be strong tomorrow and I really hope we can get the result that the team deserves.”

“I think a better result was possible today. From Q2 onwards I started to lose some grip and we need to analyse and understand what happened. I was three tenths faster on my Q2 lap compared to Q3 so we didn’t maximise things and I’m not totally satisfied. However, I feel confident about the race. The car is working well and we have a quick race car, especially in the first and final sectors. That will help us tomorrow. It’s a track that encourages good racing and I think there will be opportunities tomorrow and some close battles.”

“In the end, today was a positive day for us, if you look at the overall performance. We were 1.5 seconds from P1 in Q2, and this for us is like pole position. However, at the end of the lap, because of an issue we didn’t manage to make it into Q3, but it could have been possible today. “The team did a great job and we tried to take benefit from Stoffel’s penalty to help the other car take some slipstream on the straights. But, at the wrong time – in the last attempt in Q2 – we had a problem with the deployment, and I lost six tenths between Turns 11 and 12, so I aborted the lap because it was no longer possible to improve. “We’ll start from P11 tomorrow – which here in Spa is a bit of a surprise for us anyway – and maybe being on new tyres and choosing the compound is better than starting 10th.”

“Yesterday we tried a few downforce levels and, clearly, we had one that was far too light and it made the car tricky to drive. Today I’m very happy with myself and the team. It was a hell of a lap in qualifying. I could’ve done better with the tow, but I wasn’t quite close enough to the car in front of me to get the advantage on the straight line. The rest of the lap was pretty amazing. It’s the best we could do, to be fair. The car felt OK setup-wise. I pushed really hard, but on the low-drag circuits we’ve been struggling a little bit. It’s going to be a long race tomorrow with a lot happening. Nobody has real information about tire degradation and from the few laps I did yesterday on high fuel, the car felt OK. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Qualifying was OK. The last run I didn’t put the lap together, which was a bit of a shame. I don’t think it would’ve changed so much anyway, but it’s never so good when you don’t get your lap together. In the end, I think the gap was too big to do anything. Only Romain was within reach, really. It’s not a bad position for tomorrow’s race to try and fight for points. Not a lot has to happen at the front to get us into the points. We don’t really know how the car is in race trim, but we’ll see tomorrow. I don’t expect it to be too different from today. We should be able to fight for points.”

"I'm a bit disappointed with ending up P14 in today's qualifying because we've had a good weekend up until now; I've been on it since FP1, always in the top ten and doing very good laps. Today's qualifying was more of the same ... we were starting to think a top ten qualifying was possible here, but when you see yourself only P14, it's quite frustrating. I think I extracted the maximum out of the car so we just need to keep pushing. We will see what we're capable of doing tomorrow – it's been a good weekend so far, so there's no reason to think we can't go forward! – and hopefully we can fish some points!"

I had a broken rear endplate and it is just one of those things that happens. Unluckily that held me up so I couldn't get out for a second run in Q1 and my qualifying ended there. We need a quicker and more competitive car, as we just can't carry the speed that some other cars can and it is really costing us a lot on certain tracks. If I had got out there for my second run I would definitely have gone quicker, but I think it would have been tough to get out of Q1. It is very frustrating and not where we want to be, but we have got to keep working on the car. I just hope for a better day tomorrow, as we have long straights, overtaking is possible and you have got to be positive and hopeful.

“I’ve been in a really good place with the RS17 all weekend, easily the best all year. I’ve had strong confidence in the car, it’s felt really well balanced and we haven’t had to make many changes, so this bodes well for the future. We had a gearbox problem in Q3, which came after a couple of issues with a clutch sensor, so despite all that it’s a positive that we made it into the top ten for qualifying. Without the Q3 issue, P7 was definitely on the cards with the pace we’d shown. I’m hoping for points tomorrow.”

I’m so disappointed with the result. We’re not competitive enough. I thought maybe the crash would have been a problem today but I managed to understand the balance and the car. The car is just not competitive so I’m pretty disappointed. Even before losing five positions on the grid, it’s not a great start for the race tomorrow but racing is racing. We need to try everything we can and that’s what I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

„Es war uns bewusst, dass das heutige Qualifying schwierig wird, weil auf dieser Strecke die Motorleistung eine entscheidende Rolle spielt. Aufgrund der technischen Schwierigkeiten im dritten freien Training, konnte ich heute Morgen nur wenige Runden fahren. Aus dieser Sicht hat das Team hat eine gute Arbeit geleistet, das Maximum aus dem Auto herauszuholen. Das Fahrverhalten hat sich gut angefühlt, dennoch müssen wir einen Weg finden unsere Performance zu verbessern. Das Wetter könnte morgen durchaus einen Einfluss auf das Rennen haben.“

Im Allgemeinen war heute ein besserer Tag als gestern – zumindest habe ich heute keine Zeit auf der Strecke eingebüsst. Im dritten freien Training konnte ich daher eine gute Anzahl von Runden fahren. Doch leider ist unsere Performance nicht gut genug. Wir schauen uns nun die Daten an, um für das morgige Rennen einen Schritt nach vorne machen zu können.“

"I haven't driven much this weekend, so it's not been easy – in this morning's FP3 we had an issue with the PU and I have to say the guys did a great job to get the engine changed in time for Quali! I tried to do the best lap I could but I wasn't feeling totally comfortable and we were only able to end up P17... I haven't even done a single long-run, so it's difficult to say what to expect for tomorrow. We also have a grid penalty so we will be starting from the back, but we will try our best and see where we end up."

“It’s been reasonably positive today – I’ve been preparing for the race all weekend because I know I’ll be starting from the back. Today was all about helping Fernando try to get both cars into Q2 and then help him with the slipstream, and that’s what we did. Unfortunately he just missed out on Q3, but now we have to focus on tomorrow. I know starting from 20th I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. “I hope I can rely on the usual Spa weather like I could yesterday in the practice sessions – that would definitely help us! We knew it was always going to be difficult to get into Q3 here. We tried everything we could today, I tried to help the team as much as possible, and it’s a shame that Fernando just missed out. “It was good teamwork today. Fernando and I have a very good relationship – we’ve showed that in the past, and we’ve showed again today that we work really well together. I’m sure the situation will come where I’ll need his help! “This weekend is so special for me – there are a lot of fans here, and I have friends and family here with me to cheer me on. It definitely gives me a little extra bit of motivation for my home grand prix.”