Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

“You always try to do your best every day. Today has been one of those days, the car was fantastic. I could feel it in Q1 already and then in Q3 I knew I could get a good lap. Racing here in Germany means a lot to me and hopefully we can get first place tomorrow. We built a strong car and we know there’s still potential. Also, we know we can still improve race by race, because there’s still some weaknesses, but overall we are competitive and strong. So, it’s up to us to make good use of this potential everywhere we go”

Die Runde fühlte sich gut an, besonders im letzten Sektor. Aber ich denke nicht, dass die Pole heute für uns drin gewesen wäre. Ferrari war einfach ein bisschen schneller als wir. Morgen wird es zwischen ihnen und uns sehr eng zugehen. Der Start und die Strategie werden über das Ergebnis entscheiden. Wir haben an unseren Starts gearbeitet und gute Fortschritte erzielt, aber Ferrari ist bislang in dieser Saison richtig gut losgefahren. Jetzt werden wir herausfinden, ob wir den Abstand verkürzen konnten. Es ist schade, dass Lewis einen Großteil des Qualifyings verpasst hat. Er wird versuchen, so weit wie möglich nach vorne zu gelangen. Wir haben in den letzten Rennen gesehen, dass er dazu in der Lage ist. Ich selbst werde mich darauf konzentrieren, mir diesen einen Platz zu holen und der Start könnte meine beste Möglichkeit dafür sein. Hockenheim ist das Heimrennen von Mercedes und deshalb werde ich morgen mein absolut Bestes geben.

“Today the car was working well and in qualifying I knew there was a lot of lap time in it. On my first try in Q3 I had a good feeling and the lap was looking good, but then I made a mistake and got sideways. We had the speed to do better, but I did not want to make any crazy mistake and risk throwing everything away, so on my last try I took it a little bit easier. Third position is obviously not ideal, but in the end it is a pretty good position to start from. It’s difficult to say what will be the key to the race. So far our car has been good and I expect it to be the same tomorrow, but the conditions might change. As for every race we’ll try to do our maximum and see what it brings in the end. We need to do the best we can.

“Fourth was the maximum we could do. You have to be realistic going into Qualifying and if you don’t have the horsepower you can’t expect to be at the front. I was very happy with my lap, I feel we extracted the most out of the car so a satisfying day from my point of view. The plan was to start on Softs but the red flag in Q2 changed that. Looking back, I think we would have been ok but we wanted to make sure we progressed to Q3, so we will now start the race on Ultrasofts. This compound should be stronger for the start sequence. It’s then unknown how the tyres will degrade due to the track temperature being different from Friday compared to the race. Our pace should be better tomorrow than in Qualifying so with a good start I’ll see how I can progress. I think I’m starting on the inside which isn’t ideal but being on the second row helps. It was good to see all the fans out there, I’m not sure if they were cheering Sebastian as I was following him, or myself, but either way it was nice to see.”

“That was a nice lap at the end. There was no beating the Red Bulls – they’re still too far ahead for us to play with them, but we’re best of the rest again, and that’s our target. Now we just need to get it tomorrow as well, which is the bigger challenge. For tomorrow, you just hope the guys ahead get a good start so we can get some free air and do our own thing. We’re lucky that it’s looking like the temperatures will be a little bit cooler. With the problems we had on Friday with the overheating of the tires, maybe it’ll be a bit better. Hopefully, the car will behave well, as it did today, and we can score some good points.”

“It was a pretty good session. We just need to see what happened on my last run. I went wide on turn one, so we just have analyze that. We couldn’t do the second push lap in Q3, unfortunately, but all in all, it was a good session. I’m really happy for the team. On a track were we were not sure we’d be competitive, we’ve been good. We’re right up there, so that’s very encouraging. We’ll see what the weather’s like Sunday. There’s a bit of uncertainty about that, but I don’t think we’ll mind cooler conditions. I think we’re in a good place for tomorrow.”

“I would have loved to have been a little bit closer to the front, but I’m happy with my laps and progression through qualifying. Tomorrow I’ll give it a shot to hunt down the cars in front of me. It was great to see the home crowds and so much support today with full grandstands; that makes me proud and happy as a German and I hope to reward this support with a strong Grand Prix.”

“I’m pretty pleased with how things have gone today. Qualifying was quite challenging at the beginning, but we made big improvements throughout. I put in a decent lap in Q3 and eighth is not a bad position for tomorrow. I didn’t use the new front wing in qualifying but the upgrade is working which is also great news. As always, we are targeting to put both cars in the points tomorrow. Our race pace looks promising, but we need to keep an eye on the tyres and managing them throughout.”

„Es ist toll, das Qualifying auf dem 9. Platz zu beenden, nicht nur für mich, sondern für das ganze Team – denn gemeinsam konnten wir Q3 ein weiteres Mal erreichen. Der Tag hat recht kompliziert begonnen. Starker Regen hat uns in FP3 einiges an Zeit gekostet. Im Qualifying haben wir es allerdings geschafft, alles zusammenzuführen, und eine gute Leistung zu zeigen. Die Balance des Autos war gut, und die neuen Updates haben wie erwartet funktioniert. Hoffentlich können wir so weitermachen, und ein paar Punkte sammeln. Seit Anfang der Saison haben wir uns bereits stark verbessert, und ich freue mich darauf, morgen auf diesen Fortschritten aufzubauen.“

“I am happy with our performance today. I think the team did a strong job especially considering we lost FP3 to the rain. It wasn’t an easy session and I only just made it through to Q2. I had to make every lap count in every session. P10 is a good place to start the race, but I think the conditions will be much hotter tomorrow. So it will be a completely different game and tyre management will be very important. We can certainly aim for points and hopefully beat some of the cars ahead of us.”

“I’m definitely happy with 11th, as it’s a small pole position for the midfield group. Tomorrow we’ll start on the tyres we wish, and they’ll be new, so it’s a great opportunity to score points as we’re starting already close to the points zone. It’ll be a close fight but normally on Sundays we pick up a little bit of pace, so we’ll try to do our best and have a good race. “We had the benefit of [Lewis] Hamilton and [Daniel] Ricciardo not running, this is clear, but still we completed a good qualifying. “The car is getting better; the new parts are definitely improving our performance but everyone else is making small steps every race so we keep more or less the same gap with our rivals. However, we are moving in the right direction and hopefully we can bring more and bigger upgrades to the next few races. “We need both McLarens to score points so we have to find what the issue on Stoffel’s car is, as it’s the second race that we’ve seen less downforce and a problem with that car.”

It was a really good result for us today getting into Q2 and finishing P12 in qualifying. We ran a big programme yesterday where we went through many things, I don’t want to be too optimistic, but we have found some interesting things yesterday. We put all these findings into one package and it was a good call in the end. It’s a very important step for all the team as we have been waiting for this for a long time and it’s good to show we are moving in the right direction. I am very proud of myself and for all of the team for the hard work and development.

„Es war ein gemischtes Qualifying für mich. Das erste Ziel war es, das Q2 zu erreichen. Danach war das Potential sich zu verbessern weiterhin vorhanden, allerdings hat es nach meiner Drehung leider nicht mehr geklappt. Ich konnte zwar noch einmal auf die Strecke fahren, aber es war nicht die beste Runde – schade. Wir haben morgen eine gute Startposition, direkt hinter den Top 10. Ein weiterer Vorteil ist, dass wir unsere Reifen wählen dürfen. Das Auto fühlt sich gut an, und wir sind stark. Unser Ziel ist es, morgen Punkte zu gewinnen, und ich freue mich auf das Rennen.“

Heute war ein harter Tag, aber so etwas kommt im Sport vor. Das gehört eben zum Rennsport dazu. Wir hatten in der ersten Kurve einen Hydraulikdefekt. Danach habe ich die Servolenkung verloren und bin weit hinausgekommen. Wenn man sich in einem so hart umkämpften Meisterschaftskampf befindet wie in diesem Jahr, dann kann man sich solche Tage nicht leisten. Es steckt so viel Vorbereitung darin, jeder arbeitet sehr hart und dann ist es ein echter Schock, so früh im Qualifying auszuscheiden. Das schmerzt und manchmal kannst du kaum glauben, was passiert ist und musst dich einfach zusammenreißen. In diesem Moment dachte ich mir nur: Schiebe das Auto zurück zur Box, vielleicht können wir es reparieren. Das ist dieser Wille, niemals aufzugeben. Jetzt muss ich dieses negative Erlebnis abhaken und den morgigen Tag als eine weitere Gelegenheit ansehen, um zurückzuschlagen. In Hockenheim ist das Überholen schwieriger als in Silverstone, aber ich werde mein Bestes geben.

“It’s not a great feeling going out in Q1 but I made a slight error in qualifying today, which cost me the opportunity to continue into Q2. I didn’t manage to get the right feeling with the car and we couldn’t set it up how I wanted. Today’s rain during FP3 really hurt me because I had already missed a session yesterday. There is nothing we could have done about it, but it meant we went into qualifying feeling a bit blind, with just one session of track time. I think Sergio showed what the car can do around here and I am confident our pace in the race is going to be strong. The battle in the midfield is going to be close, as always, but this is a good track for overtaking and I think we can push our way into the points.”

"I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't make it to Q2 today. It was a relatively smooth session, my first lap looked OK so I opted for one lap at the end of the session. In hindsight, maybe doing two laps would have been better with the track improving the way it did. In addition, we really lacked some pace on the Ultrasoft tyre today. Thinking of the positives, our long run pace looks quite competitive - we were one of the quickest cars in the midfield during the race simulations."

It is a shame as I just didn't get it together. Looking back on my lap, there were a few things I could improve, but we tried all sorts of stuff. I don't think we adjusted the front wing very well for that last run, as we were on the understeer side, so in hindsight there was a lot more in the car. I didn't dial in the car the way I would have liked to, but probably with a good FP3 session we could have saved that and had a much better qualifying. However, that is how it is, and I have to focus on the race tomorrow.

“The situation today was the same as at Silverstone. Since we hit the ground there we were the last car by some margin, and it’s turned out the same today and all weekend so far. It’s frustrating as we’ve changed a lot of parts on the car to try and fix the problems, but we haven’t yet managed to find a solution. “I definitely haven’t forgotten how to drive. Between me and Fernando the cars are in a similar spec, but we can see some issues on the data on my side. The team has put in a lot of effort to change parts already, but it seems like we’re not really moving forward much and the team is looking at various options to see what else we can do. The priority now is to find a solution for the problem we have. “Tomorrow I have nothing to lose, so the only way is up from here and hopefully we can extract a little bit more out of it.”

“We’re starting last tomorrow no matter what, so by not taking part in Q2 means we have a choice of which tyre to start the race with. If we had done Q2 then whichever tyre we went on, we would have to start the race on. This decision has given us a bit more freedom and we can decide what looks best for tomorrow and save some mileage on the car. I’m actually glad that Qualifying is dry and the others were forced to use the tyres as it gives us a bit more of an open book to choose the most aggressive strategy. It’s one of those races like Silverstone which is between a one or two stop. Depending on how fast I can come through the pack will determine whether I can make it a one stop. I think we need a little bit of luck to get a podium, it’s a long shot but it’s never impossible. Now I’m just thinking of the excitement I will have starting from the back tomorrow. Obviously, I would rather start at the front but there will be some excitement to be had for sure. It’s probably going to be doubly entertaining with Lewis now also starting towards the back too, so both of us coming through the field should make for a good race. Lewis probably isn’t as happy as me right now as I knew this penalty was coming and he had a chance of pole, but tomorrow we’re going to have a good time I’m sure.”

"It's such a shame to go out in qualifying so early. We hoped we would see some rain for the session but it didn't happen unfortunately. It's pretty difficult for us at the moment because the other teams are improving and we haven't made the step forward we would have liked, so we need to work hard to catch the others. I know the team is working flat out, but we are still struggling with pace. I knew it wouldn't have been easy to make it to Q2 today, and in the end we missed it by just four-hundredths of a second. However, considering our times yesterday, our race pace looks competitive, so hopefully tonight we can find a good strategy for tomorrow. Everything's possible - of course we will need some lucky happenings to make our way through the pack, but we will give it our everything to recover as many positions as we can."