Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Es ist ein gutes Gefühl, auf der Pole Position zu stehen. Ich erwarte morgen ein sehr enges Rennen, umso schöner ist es, von der Spitze zu starten. Wir haben bislang ein starkes Wochenende gezeigt und es ist schön, dass wir diesen Eindruck auch in der ersten Session bestätigen konnten, in der es darauf angekommen ist. Denn schlussendlich spielt es keine Rolle, ob du bis zum Qualifying ein gutes Wochenende gehabt hast, dann zählt ausschließlich, ob du eine gute Runde abliefern kannst. Ich glaube, dass wir auf der Geraden im Vergleich zu Ferrari noch immer ein wenig zurückgelegen haben, aber wir waren in den Kurven stärker und konnten so alles in allem mehr Zeit gutmachen als wir auf den Geraden auf sie verloren haben. Morgen erwartet uns ein enges Rennen, in dem wir für den Sieg eine starke Rennpace und die richtige Strategie benötigen. Zudem muss ich einen guten Start hinlegen, um sicherzustellen, dass ich meine Führung sowohl gegen Lewis als auch die beiden Ferrari-Fahrer verteidigen kann. Wir waren das gesamte Wochenende über stark und morgen möchten wir dieses Niveau halten, um die Aufgabe erfolgreich abzuschließen.

Das Team hat fantastische Arbeit abgeliefert. Ich freue mich sehr, dass wir mit beiden Autos in der ersten Startreihe stehen. Valtteri hat eine großartige Leistung gezeigt und war ein bisschen schneller als ich. Aber ich bin damit zufrieden, dass ich ein paar ordentliche Runden hinlegen konnte. Ich wusste vorher nicht, wo wir stehen würden, aber schlussendlich haben wir eine starke Performance abgeliefert. Bis zum Qualifying hatte ich an diesem Wochenende stark mit der Balance zu kämpfen. Deshalb bin ich wirklich froh, wie es im Qualifying für uns gelaufen ist. Es war etwas spät, aber lieber spät als nie. Jetzt werde ich versuchen, morgen einen guten Start hinzulegen. Zudem wird es auf den Umgang mit den Reifen sowie die Strategie ankommen. Auf dieser Strecke kann man überholen, entsprechend sollte es ein spannendes Rennen werden. Ich bin überzeugt, dass sich morgen ein paar Gelegenheiten ergeben werden und ich werde versuchen, mich in die bestmögliche Position zu bringen, um mitzukämpfen.

“We could have done a bit better today but probably not enough to really beat our rivals for pole. It could have been worse, but I am not entirely happy. We started off well, but then our competitors had more pace over the single lap in terms of pure performance. We should have a good car tomorrow though and hopefully we can show it throughout the whole 56 laps. It’s a long race and I expect it to be a very tight one too. Making the right strategy choices will be important; we must make the right call at the right time and see where that takes us. I am not sure everyone understands how many variables have to be taken into account. The top drivers are all starting on Medium tyres and we will see if that turns out to be the right choice. I believe anything can happen.”

“I am annoyed with myself today. I made a mistake on the last lap and I really shouldn’t have done that. Overall, I think there are some positives, because in all three practice sessions I was struggling quite a lot with the setup, the confidence in the car and the driving. But then, before qualifying we introduced some changes, which meant I could drive better and set the lap times we were expecting. It was good but it is also disappointing not to extract all the potential from the car today. We knew our rivals would be competitive as they have been since the first session. The race tomorrow is going to be a bit more complicated than expected, as I haven’t done any long runs yesterday nor this morning because of the red flag so, I will be a bit in the dark. It will be tough but I’ll push as much as possible and we can expect our opponents to be very strong.”

“On the final run in Q3 I followed the Ferrari in front of me as we were all in a queue. I was actually trying to be nice and not overtake, as that’s not what you do in qualifying when you’re all trying to prepare for the last run. This time it caught me out when I was overtaken at the end of the lap. I am of course not happy with that, or to be fifth, but we didn’t get the opportunity to do a final lap. I’m sure this will swing around and happen to other people at another time but it’s annoying as we were fighting for third. Of course, when you can’t do the last lap in Q3 you know the guys who are doing the lap have a chance of overtaking you and that’s what happened. It is how it is, and it will make tomorrow more interesting. We have good race pace, I’m not sure if we have the pace for a victory, but for sure we will fight for a podium.”

”Driving F1 cars is probably the best job in the world, so I cannot really complain about anything (laughs). I think today was pretty good, it was still difficult to drive the car and I’m still not 100 percent happy with my driving, but P6 was probably the best we could expect today. I have some areas to improve but I had a better feeling with the car than last weekend. We now know what we need to improve on and I know what I can do on my side. I had a different strategy than the top five with the soft tyres today, so let’s see how that works tomorrow. For sure we know the degradation on the softs can be a bit tricky, but anything can happen at this track. We saw it last year with Daniel and again in qualifying today when it was hectic on the last run. Max was fast all weekend so now we both need to focus on the race. We will push flat out and I really hope we can get some good points. I think we’re in a good place to start the race and I’m excited for tomorrow.”

“I’m really happy for the team with today’s result. It’s really good to have both cars in Q3; that’s a solid result. This midfield battle is so tight and your weekend can change within one or two tenths of a second, so it’s pleasing to be at the head of that midfield battle. My Q3 lap was actually a little bit messy in the final sector, so I was happy to hear we had finished seventh. Tomorrow, we’ll realistically like to hold onto the top seven and see if we can go after sixth.”

“It’s a really good team result. The car has been feeling good and performing well all weekend and we had a smooth qualifying today. We managed to get into Q2 on just one run, which is pleasing. I was happy with all my laps, we knew it would be close and it shaped out to be that way. The important thing is the team result and we can race strong from there. Our long run pace yesterday was competitive, the package feels good and we’ll be pushing for a double points finish.”

“It was good to be in Q3, but not good to get zero laps – we just missed it. Everyone went out of the pits at the same time, I got out just a little bit late, I missed six or seven cars. I couldn’t get around to cross the line before the checkered flag. I was just at the back of the queue, so I didn’t get a lap. I don’t think we’d have been much better if we’d had the lap, but it would still be good to try. At least we have some good tires for tomorrow. I’m not as optimistic for Sunday but hopefully we’ll have a good result, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I wasn’t very pleased with my first attempt in Q2, I had a big snap in turn eight, I just couldn’t complete the lap. When you’ve got one chance, and the midfield is within two tenths of a second, it puts a lot of pressure on us. We did well, and I think we recovered very well from yesterday, so I was happy with that. Obviously, in Q3, we maybe hadn’t adjusted our clocks to Chinese time. I think the car looked really good today, much better than yesterday, so I’m very happy with that. Renault looked really strong yesterday on their long runs, so let’s see if we can keep up with them. We’re in a pretty good position. Obviously, it wasn’t ideal to not set a time in Q3, but I think the pecking order we see there in Q3 is more representative of the pecking order for the year.”

“It was a tight Qualifying as always, a very narrow gap separated a couple of cars, so a tenth of a second would mean two or three positions on the grid. I think I did the best I could today and the car felt quite good but we still have some room for improvement, although in general it was a very strong session. I think this was our best Qualifying of the year so far, Q3 was within two hundredths of a second, so it’s just a pity to miss out by such a small margin. Based on FP2 we have a strong car for the race and a good starting position, so we’ll try to do our best to finish inside the top 10.”

“P12 is a good result - we were less than a tenth away from making Q3 so I feel quite happy with our performance considering our speed in practice. With a perfect lap we could have made the top ten, but the windy conditions made it tricky out there today. The midfield is so tight and if you don’t have a perfect lap, you can miss out. I would have preferred to be P11, but we are in a nice position. There is a question mark as to whether the soft or medium tyre is the best, but we will evaluate the data with the engineers this evening and make our decision. We have free tyre choice for the start and, with a good strategy, I think we can make up some ground tomorrow and aim for points.”

“I would say that we had a few pretty good runs in qualifying. The feeling in the last one was more like it should be. I was out on the back straight alone at one point and didn’t get enough speed. That’s how it goes sometimes. We will find out tomorrow what we can achieve in the race.”

“Quite disappointed today with P14, but already in FP3 we saw that it was going to be very difficult to get into Q3. We knew coming into Shanghai that it was going to be a tough circuit for us and it was going to expose more our limitations. “However, I think we managed to put together a decent qualifying. Maybe I missed a tenth or tenth and a half on my last run, but overall I think I extracted pretty much all our potential from the car. We’ll analyse and work on our weaknesses and we’ll prepare ourselves for the race as best as possible.”

“Today was obviously not as good as the past two weekends but, on the whole, I don’t think it was horrendous. There’s still some work to do with the car. Overall, there wasn’t a lot more to gain today: Carlos was quicker than me – but he wasn’t ahead of anyone else. I think he did a really good job of getting the most out of the car. “This track just doesn’t suit our car, compared to the previous two. It’s just an area we have to work on.”

“A frustrating session. I don’t feel I got as much out of it as I should, so it could definitely have been better. I’m not quite getting to grips with the car 100% yet and I made some mistakes on my lap, which cost us a couple of tenths and, in the end, that’s all it takes. It’s very, very tight in the midfield and every tenth counts. My race pace is generally pretty good and I believe we can be stronger tomorrow, but when it comes to Saturdays we need to sort a few things out to really unlock that extra bit of performance. We started sixteenth in Australia and finished ninth, so there’s no reason why we can’t do the same thing here. It’s a long race, I generally make good starts, and you can score points from wherever you start on the grid, so that’s what I’m aiming to do tomorrow.”

Starting P17 is definitely higher than we expected going into this weekend. It was a fairly decent session, we are getting closer to everybody else and as a team we are slightly more competitive. We are understanding the car better and getting more out of the set-up which has enabled us to find some laptime. We will go out and give it everything tomorrow and see what we can do.

It has been a surprising qualifying with the balance of the car. I struggled a lot in the first run where I had massive oversteer which I was not expecting, as we’ve struggled with understeer all weekend. We have to try and understand this as it came as a surprise. Tomorrow will not be easy, managing the tyres will be important especially depending on the ambient and track temperatures but it will be the same for all of us.

“Not the luckiest weekend so far for me. We had an issue during qualifying today which we are still looking in to. I had to return to the garage and was not able to go back out to set a lap time. A pity, but at least this track offers good opportunities for overtaking, so I will head into the race from the back row tomorrow with the target to work my way forward as much as possible.”

“I had a pretty big crash in FP3 but I’m OK, I’m just more disappointed I made a mistake. Obviously, being quick in FP3 doesn’t really help you that much as it’s Qualifying that counts, but there are still positives to take away. I had been playing around with that AstroTurf at the last corner for a while now because it’s a bit quicker using that extra bit of track. It’s always a little bit loose and normally you can recover it, but this time I was a bit greedy with the throttle. I would have preferred to have spun to the left side of the track, but the car went to the right and I hit the wall. Looking on the bright side, we had a good FP2 and our race pace looks strong so I’m optimistic about tomorrow’s race. It’s not going to be easy, but I think we have the pace to make a few overtakes and hopefully get some more points.”