Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Das ist ein richtig gutes Gefühl, das ich sehr vermisst habe. Nach dem Qualifying habe ich richtiggehend gezittert. Es ist etwas ganz Besonderes, mit dem Auto bis ans Limit gehen zu können. Wir haben uns eine sehr lange Zeit auf diesen Moment vorbereitet und man weiß vorher nie, wo man wirklich steht. Aber unser Team hat fantastische Arbeit geleistet, was unheimlich beeindruckend ist. Die Saison ist noch jung, schließlich war dies erst das erste Qualifying des Jahres, aber ich bin sehr beeindruckt davon, was unser Team erreicht hat. Vielen Dank an die gesamte Mannschaft, sowohl hier an der Rennstrecke als auch Zuhause in den Werken – dies ist ein fantastisches Auto. Mit dem heutigen Ergebnis bin ich sehr zufrieden, aber erst morgen zählt es. Darauf müssen wir uns jetzt konzentrieren und weiter hart arbeiten.

“I think third on the grid is a good start, of course I would have liked to fight for pole position but that wasn’t possible today. On a single lap around this track we have never been the strongest but there are things we can for sure improve moving into qualifying next weekend. Tomorrow is a different day and we have a different strategy starting on the medium tyres compared to everyone else around us on the soft. It’s going to be warmer as well so hopefully that will also work to our advantage. That doesn’t mean that Mercedes are going to be slow, but hopefully it will close the gap a little bit. First we need to have a good start as I don’t want to do the same as last year and then we will do everything we can to fight for the win. It’s a shame that the fans are not here at our home track as they really help to make a good atmosphere but we’ll try to make it an exciting race for everyone watching on TV.”

“I’m very happy, this was my best qualifying position ever, so it’s a big achievement for myself but also for the team. It’s the best team result for six years, so it’s good to see the progress we’ve made. However, this result doesn’t mean we’ve made it, we’ve got to keep working hard. That’s what we’ve been doing this whole weekend, we keep chipping away. We’ve got a good starting position for tomorrow, so I’m happy with that — a good qualifying throughout. I was confident, even though it didn’t always look like we were the third-best team. To put it all together come Q3, and especially on the second run, made me happy. I think it’s good for us as a team but tomorrow’s a different day and we’ll still have to work hard during the race.”

“It feels good to be back in a qualifying session and I enjoyed it, but I’m not overly happy with my result. I struggled a bit at the beginning but by the end I was ok. We just weren’t able to maximise it today. On the first run in Q3 I was too far behind the pack and although it’s not Monza, it’s similar here in that a slipstream is worth a good chunk of time, but there was some time in my driving too. On my second Q3 run we got yellow flags after Bottas went off so that wasn’t ideal but P5 on the grid isn’t too bad and let’s see how our race pace is tomorrow.”

Valtteri hat heute großartige Arbeit geleistet. Alles in allem war es ein fantastischer Saisonstart für das Team. Auf meiner letzten Runde im Q3 habe ich ausgangs Kurve vier eine große Staubwolke gesehen und wusste zunächst nicht, wo das Auto war, das von der Strecke abgekommen war. Aber dann habe ich gesehen, dass Valtteri gerade wieder auf die Strecke zurückgefahren ist. Somit hatte es keinen Einfluss auf meine Runde. Letztlich hat er seine Position behalten und ich meine. Dieses Team zeigt jedes Jahr aufs Neue, wozu es in der Lage ist und wir setzen immer wieder neue Maßstäbe. Ich glaube, einer der Gründe dafür ist, dass wir aufgeschlossen sind und mit der Zeit gehen. Wir lernen stets voneinander und wir treiben uns gegenseitig immer weiter an. Wir sind eine Einheit, es gibt keine interne Politik und wir geben gemeinsam alles. Ich glaube, dass dies der Grund ist, warum wir auch in diesem Jahr stark zurückgekommen sind. Jetzt müssen wir diese Stärke morgen im Rennen erneut zeigen.

“I’m happy with sixth on the grid: I matched Albon for fifth, but unfortunately he set the lap before me! It was a good performance by the team - the car has been consistent and is working well, and it was a good lap in Q3. I’m confident for tomorrow because I think our race pace should be strong, and we’ll be in the mix to fight for points, but we’ll also see how all the other teams stack up. The first lap is always tricky here, but if we can keep it clean and tidy I think we can gain some ground through the first few corners. It’s such a buzz to be back racing and let’s see what we can do tomorrow.”

“Seventh place is the best we could do today. Of course it’s not where we want to be but we are just not quick enough, so we need to work hard and try to catch up. There’s still a bit of performance we can get here and there and we need to put everything together, getting the best out of the package we have, because for now it’s all we’ve got. The smallest detail is very important as everyone is very close now. It was a difficult day but at least now we know where we are. As a team all we can do is cheer up and find the positive in all of this, even though it’s not easy. We need to work all together in a constructive way and try to do the best job possible to improve things in the next few races. We should keep our moral up and be motivated and just work to improve. This is the way forward to get out of these hard times. The balance of the car is quite good but it’s the overall performance which is still not good enough. As for the race, anything can happen and having a good strategy with the right tyre management, maybe we can score some good points.”

“It’s been a very good day for the team. Congrats! We can be happy with the performance of the car after winter testing. It’s good to be fighting in the top 10 already in the first weekend, so very happy about that. Personally, I’ve been struggling a bit the whole weekend, not finding the right balance for certain corners, and I couldn’t put together the final lap I was aiming for. Otherwise I think P8 is not a bad starting position for tomorrow and we’ll definitely be fighting for the first points of the season.”

“It was a positive qualifying for the team and both cars in Q3 is a great way to start the season. The team has done a strong job over the winter to develop a competitive car. My Q3 lap was clean, and it was a good shot, but there’s always room for improvement to optimise the lap. It’s really tight here between all the cars, so a couple of tenths makes a big difference and can cost you as many as five or six places. That’s what the fans back home want to see, as well as the drivers. We’re in a good position to score points in tomorrow’s race and it’s going to be an exciting one.”

“I had to lift on the last run with the yellow flag. We know we could have been better than tenth as we’ve shown that all weekend. To be in Q3 is positive for us, especially after last year here. It’s a sign of more progress. Things like this are out of what you can control, so it’s a bit frustrating but it happens. We’ll have to go and do it tomorrow and look to push towards the top eight if not, even higher. I’m looking forward to the lights going out tomorrow!"

“I didn’t feel so confident with the car towards the end of the session, but the race is tomorrow and that’s the part of the weekend we look forward to the most. So, we will see what we can learn from today to improve for tomorrow. Our car was not quick enough and the balance was not ideal. I think we were losing a bit on the straights with too much drag, but in some corners we are very competitive. For sure we would have liked to be faster, but P11 puts us in a good spot for the race, with a free tyre choice allowing us to do something different with the strategy, which could be important as it is meant to be much hotter tomorrow. It’s not ideal and I am not fully happy and we clearly did not have as much in hand as the others, but our race pace should be more competitive.”

“I’m pleased with my result today. After yesterday’s practice sessions we might have expected that it was not going to be an easy Qualifying for us today, but overnight we managed to make some good improvements to the car. I think we can be happy with both cars in Q2. At the moment that’s where we are, but we have a free choice of tyres and so many things can happen during a race, so hopefully this will give us a good opportunity to fight for points tomorrow. The target is always the same and we’ll push as much as we can to get a good result here at Red Bull’s home race.”

“It’s hard to know what to expect for the race, as today’s Quali is about a single lap and tomorrow it’s 71. Qualifying was ok, although to be honest my laps weren’t super tidy and I left some lap time on the table, because of a couple of mistakes. But the pace was there considering that we were unhappy yesterday in FP1 and worked hard to improve the car from then on. We got just about everything out of the car this afternoon. We lack a couple of tenths here, but historically this track has always been a bit tricky for us and we are already in better shape than we were here last year. We are starting from a position where we can fight for some points and have a strong clean race.”

“I’m not very satisfied with today as it’s not what we wanted to achieve. I know we could have done better with what we had in hand. There were just a few little details that we didn’t get right. I want to review what happened as the gap to where I want to be is pretty big. We’ll take a look and keep working hard. It wasn’t enough today, but tomorrow we’ll aim to come back stronger.”

“We knew going into the session that our qualifying pace wasn’t as good as we’d hoped for, but it’s somewhere in line with what we saw from pre-season testing. The positive is that the race pace seems to be better than qualifying, so I’m obviously hopeful that tomorrow we can be fighting and have some fun. There’s clearly work to be done on the car to enable us to go faster, but we’ve seen some encouraging things too. We’ll keep working, put our heads down, and we’ll see how we go.”

“We haven’t qualified where we thought we would be. I had slightly higher hopes, and I know the team had. It’s a bit disappointing to find ourselves out in Q1 but that was the pace we had. P16 is obviously not fantastic. I did my best, I felt like I did a decent lap, but it’s tricky to be out already. At the moment it looks like the other teams have found more than we have. I know we’ve been working to improve our car. We’ll continue to work hard on that but for now our focus is on tomorrow. Our race pace yesterday didn’t look terrible in comparison to our qualifying pace. We definitely need a bit more; we need to find it. I’m hopeful and I’m going to be doing my best to get something out of the race.”

Today has exceeded my expectations, I knew we had made a step forward, but I didn’t think we would be in this position. Unfortunately, we missed the slipstream that we were aiming for on my previous lap, that cost me about two tenths, but it was definitely a very good effort. We have made a big step forward, and this is the closest we have been on pure pace. The team did a really good job to get the most out of the car so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.

„Nicht der Beginn, den wir wollten, aber wir müssen uns darauf konzentrieren, wie wir es morgen besser machen können. In meiner letzten Runde habe ich wirklich hart gepusht, ich war am Limit, und leider habe ich einen kleinen Fehler gemacht. Ich wusste, dass ich etwas Spezielles ausprobieren musste, aber es hat nicht geklappt. Wir können hoffentlich im Rennen wieder aufholen. Ich glaube, dass wir im long run pace etwas stärker sind, so dass wir, wenn wir die Strategieentscheidung richtig machen und in den ersten Runden Schwierigkeiten vermeiden, im weiteren Verlauf des Rennens einige Plätze gutmachen können.”

„Wir hatten irgendwie einen schwierigen Tag erwartet, aber genau da scheinen wir jetzt zu sein. Wir wussten, dass es eng für uns werden würde und ein wenig Verkehr in meiner letzten Runde zu finden, tat es für mich. Wir müssen einen Weg finden, unsere Wettbewerbsfähigkeiten gegenüber unseren Rivalen wiederzuerlangen: Es ist nur das erste Rennen, wir sind nicht dort, wo wir sein wollen, aber wir haben die Zeit, uns zu verbessern. Morgen werden wir versuchen, ein gutes Ergebnis einzufahren: Wir haben nichts zu verlieren, also gehen wir einfach raus und versuchen, das Beste zu tun, was wir können.”

I am pleased with my first qualifying session considering how this morning went. I made a silly mistake in FP3 and I was unable to get the laps in to fully prepare myself for qualifying. But I am pretty happy with the pace, and more so because I know there is some time left in me and some time that we can find with the car. We have to go from there and hopefully we have a clean race tomorrow.