Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Es ist ein großartiges Gefühl, meine erste Saison-Pole geholt zu haben. Ich mag diese Strecke sehr. Schon im vergangenen Jahr hatte ich hier ein gutes Wochenende und auch in dieser Saison hat das Wochenende wieder gut begonnen. Die Strecke ist schwierig. Es gibt nur sieben richtige Kurven, aber man kann dabei sehr leicht einen Fehler machen und viel Zeit verlieren. Es hat mir sehr geholfen, dass meine erste Runde im Q3 richtig gut war. Dadurch konnte ich im zweiten Versuch darauf aufbauen. Ich werde mir die Daten noch genau ansehen, um herauszufinden, wo ich mich weiter verbessern kann. Die Fahrzeugbalance fühlte sich heute sehr gut an. Entsprechend kann ich mir nicht vorstellen, warum das morgen anders sein sollte. Wir haben zuletzt sehr gemischte Rennen erlebt. Deshalb hoffe ich, dass ich einen guten Start erwische und dann um den Sieg kämpfen kann. Wir haben gezeigt, dass wir hier schnell sind und ein sehr starkes Paket besitzen. Jetzt brauchen wir ein sauberes Rennen, um unser Qualifying-Ergebnis in Punkte umzusetzen. Es ist schön, ein gutes Ergebnis einzufahren, aber heute war nur das Qualifying. Erst morgen kommt es darauf an.

Das ist ein großartiges Ergebnis für das Team. Ich bin mit den Plätzen eins und zwei richtig glücklich. Herzlichen Glückwunsch an Valtteri, der heute bessere Arbeit abgeliefert hat. Er ging beim Setup einen ganz anderen Weg und rückblickend hätte ich diesen vielleicht auch einschlagen sollen. Ich bin allen in der Fabrik sehr dankbar für ihre harte Arbeit. Damit haben sie uns geholfen, das Auto zu verbessern, Fortschritte zu machen und die ersten beiden Startplätze einzufahren. Es ist ein echtes Privileg, in dieser Position zu sein. Hier kann man dem Vordermann nur schwer folgen, weshalb es normalerweise nicht sehr viele Überholmanöver gibt. Aber warten wir ab, ob die drei DRS-Zonen einen Unterschied ausmachen werden. Ferrari beginnt das Rennen auf den ultraweichen Reifen. Red Bull und wir starten hingegen auf den SuperSofts - das wird sicher interessant. Zwischen den beiden Reifen besteht ein gewisser Performance-Unterschied. Deshalb wird es schwierig, Sebastian am Start hinter mir zu halten. Aber ich werde natürlich mein Bestes geben, um es zu schaffen. Morgen wird es garantiert eng zugehen, aber wir befinden uns in einer guten Ausgangslage für das Rennen.

“Obviously, it’s not the ideal result, but it’s a rather decent one,” Kimi commented. “It has been a pretty straightforward and consistent day. I struggled a little bit with understeer in the last few corners to get the car to turn and carry the speed into the corner, but apart from that it was ok. For sure there are always things to improve and you can always go faster; today we did our best, but it was not enough. Tomorrow is a different day, we know that sometimes qualifying is different from the race. We’ll start on different tires to our competitors, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out. This is quite a special circuit, lap time is very short so we expect everybody to be very close. As for overtaking, it’s supposed to be easier with an additional DRS zone. Let’s hope we have a stronger day on Sunday”.

“The car felt a bit better today, in Q1 and Q2 it felt quicker but we just didn’t make the step needed in Q3. All weekend we have been chasing the balance of the car so this means we are not as close as we would like. This not only effects Qualifying but also our long run pace. We have it in a better window than yesterday so hopefully we can gain a bit more for tomorrow. We were down on speed on the straight even though I was running minimal downforce. I think there was a little gain from the engine mode we now have but nothing really obvious and I need to go away and look into the data to see how much we gained. I don’t think it is fully optimised yet so hopefully there is more to come. In Q3 there was a bit of confusion between Daniel and myself. Last weekend I was ahead in the session and this weekend Daniel was ahead, that is the pre-planned strategy race by race so I kept to that. They asked me to overtake him but as I said, the plan was to remain behind so I stuck to it. As we managed to get three runs in it meant it was quite a rushed Q3 but at the end of the day I followed the plan. It looks like the step Mercedes made in Paul Ricard has put them a little bit further ahead, we will have better tracks for us to come which I’m sure will mean we are closer to them and will be able to compete.”

“It was a really good qualifying. We produced some good setup work on the car and we’ve built our pace through the weekend. I’m very happy we could get into Q3 using only one set (of tires) in Q2. It meant we could have more fun and play around in Q3. I was happy with the car. It all went very well, and the balance was great. I was hoping we’d stay in P4. I was thinking, ‘Come on, that can stay there.’ The truth is that other teams are faster, but I’m very proud to be in between the two Red Bulls, and I’m happy that Kevin is P8. We’ve got both cars in the top-10 for the race tomorrow and, hopefully, we get some points.”

“I’m sorry for Carlos” said Seb, “it was never my intention to ruin his lap. You can’t see well straight back in the mirrors, with the rear wing and everything, and this time I was not told that he was coming. As for my qualifying, I think I had another tenth in my pocket today, but probably not enough to become a threat. In my first run in Q3 I knew I had to ramp it up, so I pushed very hard and made a small mistake that turned into a big snap, so I tried to recover concentration for my last attempt, which is always difficult, and probably held something back a little bit. Now let’s focus on the race tomorrow”.

“That wasn’t my best Qualifying, that’s for sure. In the heat of the moment I felt like I could have been treated more fairly, but I’ve had a few discussions since with Christian and my engineer and I can see the full picture now. I spoke a little bit with my engineer about it before Qualifying but I guess as a team it wasn’t discussed. From the team’s point of view once we got into Qualifying and Q3 and they saw us playing cat and mouse they probably thought, what is going on and this is not what we talked about. In my mind in the car, it was obvious that I wanted a run where I was getting a tow instead of giving a tow. Maybe if we had talked it over beforehand we could have done it differently. For that last run I thought I would get a chance to get a tow, but I guess by that point I didn’t want to push the air again and Max didn’t want to give me a tow. From his point of view we didn’t talk about it beforehand, so he thought, I’m staying where I am. The competitor in both of us is not wanting to give an inch. I’m not mad at Max for that but in the heat of the moment I was frustrated. Your teammate is the first guy you want to beat so everyone is out there for themselves and everyone knows that. We have a policy where we alternate who leaves the garage first race by race. Luck of the draw this week meant I was out of the garage first, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do it for every run. We haven’t been that quick here anyway and we are losing more on the straights than we thought, so when I could see I was even losing to myself on the straights, I was just thinking how am I going to be up there in Qualifying. In Q3 the balance was actually pretty good and in the high speed we are at the limit of the grip, but we just don’t have a fast package on this track. There are no points for Qualifying so let’s see what we can do tomorrow in the race.”

“I think the team did a really good job today with the car being so good. Romain did a really good lap, and we’ve been quick all day. I think P6 and P8 are pretty good starting positions for tomorrow. We’ll see how Sunday goes. Our pace yesterday in FP2 on the long runs was pretty good. We’ll take what we can get, but we need to get those points. We’re going to keep our feet on the ground and see what we can get tomorrow.”

“Today we managed to overcome our main limitations from yesterday and the car felt better. We had a strong qualifying and I’m happy to be P9 in the end, it was the best result possible today. We’ll be aiming to go forwards at the start tomorrow and hopefully we’ll have extra race pace to fight for good points. Overtaking is always difficult here, but there are three DRS zones, so let’s see what that brings.”

“We did well to get into the top ten today. I’m not so happy with qualifying, so I’m hoping for better in the race tomorrow. It’s a short track here, and if you don’t have a good balance with the car it’s difficult to extract all the pace over one lap. We’ll be aiming to look after the tyres tomorrow, as 71 laps is going to be pretty gruelling with so many corners. There’s a lot of energy going through the rubber, so we need to be smart during the race.”

“A place in Q3 was just out of reach today. We were missing a tenth or two to make the difference because the middle of the grid is very close. It’s not been the easiest weekend and we have struggled to find the pace, especially over a single lap. I think the developments we have coming for the future races will give us the boost we need. The positive thing about P11 is that we have a free choice of tyres tomorrow and can start the race on new tyres. For tomorrow I’m only looking forward and aiming for points.”

"It was a good day, we looked more competitive than we did last week in Paul Ricard, which is positive. We still need to work a bit harder and find more performance to fight with the guys in Q3, but I'm happy with the lap I did and I think we maximised the package we had. The car felt good, I think in terms of chassis things are looking quite positive, but we know with the straight line speed we are still a bit behind Mercedes and Ferrari, so overall we made a good step but there's still work to be done. However, P12 is not a bad place to start the race tomorrow because we will have the freedom to choose the tyres."

I am pretty happy with getting into Q2. Looking back at it, I think there was more in it, as we only had one set of tyres because we put three sets on in Q1, which isn't normally what our run plan is. But this time we just wanted to put all our effort into getting out of Q1, which put us on the back foot for Q2. I think we missed out a little bit on the balance in Q2, as with some of the track improvement I think we could have probably put some more front wing on it and that would have helped us gain some more positions. However, all in all I think we have to be pretty satisfied with getting into Q2 and it is a step in the right direction.

“It was a very tight session, and didn’t go perfectly for me. “I didn’t have any particular issues this afternoon. We changed a lot on the car yesterday, but we left it alone today – but it still felt a little different from one set of tyres to another, which was hard to explain. Maybe it’s the tyre preparation, or other cars doing warm-up laps before starting their push-laps. “Everyone who’s touched those yellow sausage-kerbs has broken bits of their car. Even in qualifying this afternoon, a bit broke off my car – and I didn’t even touch any of the kerbs. They’re quite harsh: I don’t see the reason for putting them there: if you’re going that far onto the run-off, you’re losing time anyway. “Qualifying was more or less what we expected – we’ll see tomorrow what the race brings.”

“I am disappointed to go out of qualifying so early today. It was definitely not the result we were expecting. We were close to making Q2 but in the end we fell just short. I found so much traffic in the last sector of my final and the time I lost kept me out of Q2. We didn’t maximise our performance and paid the price for it. With these small margins, we had to be perfect to progress and that wasn’t the case today. I feel we made some good steps forward with the car this weekend, even though we weren’t able to show it today, and we will give everything to try and recover some points tomorrow.”

It was a disappointing qualifying. I think it was one of those cases where we could improve from practice and put the car more together and still improve it through qualifying. We had the pace to get through into Q2 even with the tiny margins in it, but my out-lap was strongly compromised with the traffic. Despite this, I was able to improve my time on the first half of lap, before the yellow flag. After the yellow flag we had to abort the lap as there were a lot of cars ahead of me. Looking ahead to tomorrow, our long run pace in FP2 was promising so I am ready for tomorrow.

„Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit dem heutigen Resultat – Platz 13. Für uns gab es nicht viel mehr herauszuholen. Nun müssen wir verstehen, warum wir von FP3 auf das Qualifying einen kleinen Schritt zurück gemacht haben. Ein grosses Dankeschön an das gesamte Team – sie haben mein Auto rechtzeitig zum Qualifying wieder parat gemacht. Aufgrund einer Strafversetzung starte ich das morgige Rennen auf Platz 18. Es wird schwierig sein voranzukommen, aber ich werde alles tun um mich während der ersten paar Runden weiter nach vorne zu kämpfen. Ich freue mich auf das Rennen.“

„Für mich was es heute ein enttäuschendes Qualifying. Das Wochenende lief bisher gut – nun müssen wir daran arbeiten zu verstehen, warum wir uns bei dem Qualifying schwergetan haben. Das Auto fühlte sich gut an, also sehen wir uns nun die Daten an, um zu verstehen wie wir unsere Performance für morgen optimieren können.“

"Not a good qualifying, I was out of Q1 and three-tenths of a second off my team-mate. It hasn't really been a clean weekend, I had some of the new aero updates yesterday which didn't go 100% to plan, but THEN I think we got on top of it today. I damaged my front wing in FP3 which meant I ran the old wing in Qualifying. It was a decision made right before the session because of lack of spare parts, so I ran a bit of a hybrid between specs, of course it was not ideal but today Pierre did a better job and the new front wing would not have given me 3 tenths but may have helped to squeeze through to Q2. My last lap wasn't particularly clean and I got too close to the car in front trying to get a slipstream. The midfield is very tight and 1 tenth faster would have got me through to Q2. I am disappointed with P19 but will fight in tomorrow."

“We did our best in qualifying today, and I think we maximised the package, but this is not where we want to be. “Tomorrow, we need to aim for points by thinking about the best strategy. We have a free choice of starting-tyre and all possibilities are open for us. I’m relatively optimistic. “On my final lap, I was two tenths slower than on my previous lap; for the final two corners, I said to myself, ‘let’s try and do this flat out, in case I can recover those tenths’ but that was over the limit… “We had some fun today and the car was good to drive, but this still isn’t the position we want, and we need to keep improving.”