Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

We knew that our competitors would be strong this weekend. After FP3, we realized that we might have a shot at pole but when they put it all together in qualifying today they were just too quick. Even if I did a lap that I was quite happy with on my first run in Q3, I was still a tenth behind Max so I tried to go out with a different setup for the last lap. Unfortunately, I ended up having some oversteer and lost time, especially in the last sector. It is a bit of an odd situation starting from pole now after finishing qualifying in second, but our approach will stay the same. It will be very important to retain the lead after the start. The one who is first after turn 3 will have a huge plus because cooling is a big factor for everyone here, putting the following car at a disadvantage. The straight to turn 1 is very long, so I will have to try to capitalize on our straight line speed there. I will give it my all and hope to have an exciting race tomorrow.”

I am not entirely happy with today, because I could have had a better result if it had not been for the yellow flags for Bottas’ accident. On the first run I was probably a bit too cautious in sector 2 after a very good first sector, then I lost my rhythm a bit and was too aggressive in the final part of the lap and had a big snap in the last corner. I felt quite confident that I could find more time on my second run, but then the yellow flags came out. That can happen some times. The key tomorrow will be to have a car that works well, to look after the tyres and to choose the right strategy. The top three teams all start on the same tyre, but it will be a very close race.

Uns war schon vor dem Wochenende klar, dass wir es auf dieser Strecke schwer haben würden. Ich habe heute mein Bestes gegeben und ich glaube, dass ich das Maximum aus dem Auto herausgeholt habe. Es hat einfach nicht für die Pole gereicht. Ich denke, dass Platz drei vielleicht drin gewesen wäre, aber nicht mehr. Der vierte Startplatz ist eine gute Ausgangslage, um am Sonntag anzugreifen, und ich hoffe, dass ich einen guten Start erwischen werde. Dieses Rennen ist immer schwierig für uns und ich erwarte nicht, dass es morgen einfach wird. Vielleicht machen wir heute Abend noch einen Regentanz, denn eine nasse Strecke könnte für etwas Würze sorgen. Ansonsten wird es eine richtig harte Nuss. Red Bull war auf den Long Runs am schnellsten und es wird sehr schwer, mit ihnen mitzuhalten. Es wird auch nicht viele unterschiedliche Strategien geben, aber es wird interessant zu sehen sein, bei wem die Reifen am längsten halten werden. Das ist die große Herausforderung. Wir werden versuchen, an der Spitze mit Red Bull und Ferrari dranzubleiben und auf diesen Kampf freue ich mich.

“It’s been a very good weekend so far and we have improved in every session. I enjoy driving here but of course everything needs to be working well together to get a good performance which it was today. I’m very happy to get pole and with the recent form of Ferrari I didn’t expect it to be honest but the car was working really well. I have to say a big thank you to the Team because the last three races have been a little more tricky for us but everyone kept pushing hard and never gave up on trying to understand what we could do better. This weekend we really showed that the hard work paid off and we have a very good car. It is very disappointing to be handed a grid penalty for the race and Ferrari will be very quick tomorrow so tyre life will be important but we have a really good race car so it should be a close fight.” *Max Verstappen will start the race from fourth place following a three place grid penaltyfor breaching Appendix H, Article 2.4.5.1 b of the FIA International Sporting Code.

“Qualifying P5 was not great but not bad either. Considering the crash in FP2 yesterday, I’m quite happy and I think it was a good comeback. We didn’t have many laps in FP3 so I only really had FP1 to learn the track which meant it was going to be difficult coming into qualifying. I’m obviously happy for the Team and Max to get pole but I left a bit on the table on my side. Max proved the car is better than P5 but I’m there fighting with the guys, I would have just liked to be a bit closer, but let’s see what we can do tomorrow. I think it should be a good one and there’s a long run into Turn 1 so anything can happen. Max’s race pace looked very good yesterday and the car is quick so I’ll do some homework tonight and study the data. We saw yesterday that the tyre degradation is really high so let’s see how tomorrow unfolds. I think a lot of tyre management will be needed and hopefully we can make up some positions.”

Das war natürlich kein idealer Abschluss für einen ansonsten ordentlichen Tag. Das Auto fühlte sich heute besser an und wir konnten Fortschritte mit dem Setup erzielen. Das Fahrzeug war stabiler und ich konnte damit härter pushen. Das Qualifying verlief zunächst relativ unkompliziert und wir konnten im Q2 wie geplant die schnellste Zeit auf der Medium-Mischung fahren. Auf diesen Reifen schien die Performance gut zu sein. Ich wusste, dass ich auf meinem letzten Versuch im Q3 ein Risiko eingehen musste, um noch Plätze gutzumachen. Deshalb versuchte ich, alles aus dem Auto herauszuquetschen. Bis zur letzten Kurve war die Runde gut, aber dann bin ich am Ausgang etwas zu weit auf den schmutzigen Teil der Strecke gekommen, habe das Auto verloren und bin in die Mauer gekracht. Ich bin in Ordnung, aber leider müssen die Jungs jetzt heute Nacht eine Extraschicht einlegen. Hoffentlich können wir etwaige Strafen für morgen vermeiden. Das ist ärgerlich, weil von den Rundenzeiten her hätte ich eine Chance auf den dritten Platz gehabt. Aber morgen ist ein neuer, ganz anderer Tag, an dem der Umgang mit den Reifen entscheidend sein wird. Warten wir ab, wie es weitergeht, aber eins steht schon jetzt fest: wir werden ganz sicher unser Bestes geben.

“It’s been a good day for us. The fact that I gave it a go on the Medium tyre in Q2 is a sign that we are on the right path and it just shows the confidence that we have in the car. Without the traffic in sector 3, I would have been close to the cut, but risking Q3 with a second run on the Medium was a bit unnecessary given the pace I knew I had on the Soft. “Anyway, another final good lap means I start behind the top teams tomorrow and that gives us a good fighting position. We will have to manage the tyres carefully but I’m very happy with today’s result. I’m proud of the whole team and of how we keep on pushing. Hopefully tomorrow we can finish it off.”

“I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I struggled this weekend in terms of just not having a great feeling in the car. Finished up P8 and I don’t think it could have been much better than that with Carlos in P7. “The team here in Mexico and the guys back at the factory have done a great job. Now we focus on tomorrow. My aim is for a good start and to have a clean race and try to grab some points.”

“I’m pretty happy with today’s performance and all of my laps were quite competitive. I haven’t been super confident in Qualifying lately, as we’ve been having some problems, but now it’s good to be back in shape over one lap again. Only McLaren was in front of us today, so it’s been a good result and it’s great when you can put everything together. I think it will be a tricky race for everyone tomorrow, so we will see how things pan out. I hope we can make good use out of our starting position in the race and stay inside the top 10.”

“Overall, I’m pretty happy with my performance to make it through to Q3 for the second time in a row after Suzuka and I think we can be quite pleased with that. The car worked well the whole weekend so far and it’s been quite a good day. It’s not been an easy day though as I haven’t been feeling great, but I’ll rest up tonight and feel as good as I can tomorrow. It’s going to be tricky to start on the Softer compound with Sergio right behind us on presumably the Prime, but we still have a chance to score some points tomorrow.”

“I think that P11 is a great place to start my home race. Considering the pace that we’ve had this weekend, it’s a result that gives us a good chance for tomorrow. We will have a free choice of tyres at the start so we can look at all the strategy options and choose the one that works best. Hopefully, that will give us the opportunity to score some important points. I want a good result tomorrow for the fans because they have given me a tremendous amount of support this week. They always make this event so special and the atmosphere is amazing around the whole circuit. I’m really looking forward to putting together a strong race.”

“Given the circumstances, we’ll take twelfth on the grid. It was difficult to prepare for qualifying without the morning run, so it was a bit of a cold start for us. The mechanics did a great job to prepare the car in time so credit to them for their effort. I think we have a race on our hands tomorrow, especially as we have a free choice of tyres and some flexibility on strategy. It might work in our favour as our race pace has looked good recently.”

“It’s frustrating not to have finished higher up, but I just couldn’t execute it today. Firstly, the team did an awesome job to get ourselves out of a difficult situation. It wasn’t easy out there, but we made a good start in Q1, which was relatively smooth, but Q2 was just a bit messy. We’ll try and bounce back tomorrow. I’m sure to be feeling fired up.”

„P14 ist nicht das, was wir wollten. Aber so ist es. Der Rückstand auf bessere Platzierungen war nicht groß: Es ist enttäuschend, weil das Auto das ganze Wochenende über ziemlich okay war und wir während der vorherigen Trainingssitzungen konkurrenzfähiger aussahen. Wir müssen sehen, wie es morgen weitergeht: Wir haben die Möglichkeit, mit anderen Reifen zu starten, als es einige der vor uns stehenden Autos tun. Hoffentlich können wir dafür sorgen, dass sich alles zu unseren Gunsten entwickelt.“

„Für uns war es ein schwieriges Qualifying. Im letzten Sektor unterlief mir ein Fehler, der mich einige Zehntelsekunden kostete. Aber ich glaube nicht, dass das letztlich viel geändert hätte. Das morgige Rennen wird nicht einfach. Wir müssen jede Chance nutzen, die sich uns bietet. Der Reifenverschleiß wird hoch sein, speziell für diejenigen, die auf den weichen Reifen ins Rennen gehen. Die Reifen für den Start frei wählen zu dürfen, ist das Positive unseres Startplatzes. Wenn wir Boden gutmachen wollen, wird es wichtig sein, die richtige Strategie zu finden und auf die Reifen zu achten.“

“I am very disappointed. We had looked competitive, but we were quicker in final practice on a damp track than in qualifying, so we need to look into what happened and understand where we missed out. We made some changes to the set-up ahead of qualifying, but we didn’t achieve the balance we wanted, which is why we were so far off the pace. I just didn’t get the car switched on: I had no grip, no balance, so it was very frustrating. We have plenty of work to do now to recover tomorrow, but there is a long race ahead of us. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.”

“We had kind of predicted this, which doesn’t make it good, but it’s what we expected. We had oversteer, understeer, a bit of everything. We’re competitive people, you always go into each session to try your best, but it wasn’t to be today. We’ll just try and get out of it what we can tomorrow. We’ll try and be in the best position to take whatever comes our way.”

“Last night we made a fair bit of change to the car, and in FP3 the car felt really good in terms of rear-end, so we were lacking front-end. I thought if we could balance the front-end and keep that rear-end, we’re going to make it to Q2. I was confident of one lap pace, I thought we can do this. We rebalanced everything, we got into qualifying, and I got into Turn One and I spun – just on braking. The changes we’ve got to do from one session to another is huge, it’s not something you normally do. We have to try to understand everything, we haven’t quite got on top of it. Hopefully we can find something.”

It was really tricky out there for everybody, but I was pleased with the lap. There was still a bit more in there, but we are definitely going in the right direction. I think our long run pace is better than our single lap pace, especially versus the Haas cars and the Alfa Romeos, so we will have to see what we can do tomorrow.

It was a difficult qualifying session in Mexico. Unfortunately, I felt no grip in the car today and the laptime reflected that. We will have to see what we can do tomorrow in the race.