Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Today was simply lovely. The conditions were very tricky out there, it was very slippery, but we stayed calm, we made sure we were there at the right time and we managed to put in some solid laps. It’s been a nice day and overall we’re having a good weekend, it’s a shame for Checo but hopefully he can make up the places tomorrow during the race. Tomorrow, we need to focus on the first lap and then concentrate on our own race, I still expect there to be a good battle. It’s been a while since Fernando and I have been alongside each other on the grid, I used to look up to him as a young kid watching Formula One, with him being up there winning races and championships, so it’s great to be sharing the front row with him.

It’s an amazing result for us to take second place today, so I’m feeling very pleased. It was impossible to know the grip levels on each lap in those conditions and that made it even more challenging. In the end, I think it’s a little bit unexpected to be on the front row, but it will be very nice to line-up there tomorrow. Let’s see if we can fight with Max [Verstappen] into turn one, though, that said, aiming to score strong points will be our main aim. The team deserves a big congratulations as they have been working flat out on updates and this is an example of this. It’ll be a long race in different conditions again, but I’m confident, so let’s see what we can do on the day.

Today we had good pace and overall it was a good qualifying given the tricky conditions. On the very last sector I felt it was a bit of an “all or nothing” situation and I pushed a bit too much at the last chicane. Unfortunately, it cost me the front row, but I’m not too disappointed, as it was a great battle to the very last moment, I had to go for it, and P3 for tomorrow is not a bad starting position on this track.

Ehrlich gesagt, fühle ich mich großartig, ich bin richtig happy! P4! P4 hat sich noch nie so gut angefühlt, um ehrlich zu sein. Vielleicht in meinem ersten Rennjahr, in meinem ersten Jahr hier 2007, als ich im Quali zum ersten Mal P4 erreicht habe, das war damals ein tolles Gefühl. Ich denke, dass es sich ähnlich anfühlt, aber vor allem, weil es bislang ein richtig schwieriges Jahr war. Wir haben über Nacht viel am Auto gearbeitet und sind gestern in zwei verschiedene Richtungen gegangen, um Informationen zu sammeln. Wir haben für das Rennen immer noch leicht unterschiedliche Abstimmungen, aber wir befinden uns in einer großartigen Ausgangsposition, so dass ich hoffentlich versuchen kann, die Position zumindest zu halten. Bei diesem Auto muss alles zusammenpassen, und noch mehr. Wissen Sie was, ich glaube, dieses Auto funktioniert... Ich denke gerne, dass ich einen guten Rhythmus habe, und auf dieser Strecke und besonders in dieser Session braucht man einen guten Rhythmus. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass dieses Auto in einem ganz anderen Rhythmus arbeitet. Es funktioniert nicht in einem normalen Rhythmus, und es war schwierig, sich daran zu gewöhnen. Der Regen eröffnet immer neue Möglichkeiten, und ich liebe diese Strecke. Obwohl es an diesem Wochenende bisher schwierig war und morgen noch viel Arbeit vor uns liegt, hoffe ich, dass das gesamte Team positiv gestimmt ist. Meine Botschaft an sie lautet: Bitte macht weiter Druck. Wir brauchen euch. Ich brauche euch. Wir arbeiten alle so hart, wie wir können, und ich glaube fest an sie. Ich hoffe, dass wir irgendwann das Bouncing in den Griff bekommen und weiter vorankommen.

It’s what we had hoped for. We’ve seen before in Imola that we like these conditions and we got the job done today. It was all about continuously putting in a better lap as the track was getting better and better, so you have to push all the time and it’s very enjoyable in these conditions. Mick did a great job as well to put it in P6, so we’re P5 and P6 tomorrow, that’s a great effort from the team and I’m very happy for them.

It was pretty good although we still didn’t maximize everything as that last set of tires turned out to be a bit more difficult in terms of positioning – we had to abort one lap due to traffic and everything got a bit cold, which I didn’t want. I’m still very happy with P6 and it’s a good position to start tomorrow’s race. I don’t envisage us going further forward, only because of the pace the other cars have around us, but we’ll try our best and see where we end up. It’s our best qualifying up to now and I’m very happy for the team.

First of all, I’m delighted for the team and for Fernando today. He deserves to be starting on the front row after driving very a strong weekend so far. On my side, I feel slightly disappointed as more was probably on the table today in those conditions. We weren’t able to extract the performance that we know is there and I’ve felt a little bit off the pace all weekend. As always, we’ll continue the hard work with the engineers to find the marginal gains. Nevertheless, we have both cars in good positions on the grid for tomorrow and we’re in contention to score strong points for the team, which is most important.

Heute lautete die Devise: Wer nichts wagt, der nicht gewinnt. Der Wechsel auf Slicks war heute unsere einzige Chance, um die Pole Position zu holen. Es war buchstäblich nur Kurve 1. Wäre sie so trocken gewesen wie die anderen Kurven, hätten wir in einer wirklich guten Position sein können. Wir haben heute eine starke Pace gezeigt, aber wie ich am Funk gesagt habe, bin ich nicht hier, um mich mit P4/P5 zufrieden zu geben. Wir müssen Dinge ausprobieren, und am Ende des Tages werden die Punkte erst morgen vergeben, und ich bin froh, dass wir etwas anderes ausprobiert haben. Letztes Jahr in Sotschi bin ich ein ähnliches Risiko eingegangen, und es hat sich ausgezahlt, um P3 mit Williams einzufahren. Deshalb stehe ich einem Reifenwechsel immer offen gegenüber, zumal wir in diesem Jahr unter normalen Umständen schon schlechtere Qualifyings erlebt haben. Morgen sollten wir in der Lage sein, die Autos um uns herum zu überholen und von P8 aus wieder auf P4/P5 zu fahren. Natürlich starten Checo und Charles hinter uns, die sich wieder nach vorne kämpfen werden, also muss ich nur sicherstellen, dass ich morgen so schnell wie möglich nach vorne komme.

Another Q3 is nice. When you get into Q3 and the top ten, to leave with ninth, part of me thinks it could have been better, but as the track dried we lost just a little bit of our advantage. Weirdly, I felt a bit more competitive in the wetter conditions, and then as it dried, trying to use the rears, we struggled maybe a little bit more to lean on the tyre. With that being said, I think it’s been a positive weekend so far. It’s definitely been a step in the right direction again. We really hit the ground running in both dry and wet conditions and we’ve been on the pace, showing some good signs.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when hopefully we can get a bit deeper into the points and end the weekend on a high. There’s maybe a few cars out of position as well, and you never know how that could sway the race. There’s potentially slower cars in front, but to be honest, there’s also a couple of quicker ones behind with Charles [Leclerc] and Sergio [Perez], so it could be an interesting race. I’m looking forward to it.

Ich bin sehr glücklich, dass ich es in Q3 geschafft habe, vor allem, weil es das erste Mal war, dass ich ein komplett nasses Qualifying gefahren bin, nach Imola und FP3 heute erst das dritte Mal bei Regen. Von dem Moment an, als ich heute Morgen aufwachte und die Bedingungen sah, wusste ich, dass alles passieren kann. Wir waren in der Vergangenheit schon oft nahe an Q3 dran, aber ich hatte nicht erwartet, es hier in Montreal zu erreichen, das eine völlig neue Strecke für mich ist. Nichtsdestotrotz haben wir im bisherigen Saisonverlauf eine gute Pace gezeigt und gute Fortschritte gemacht, und das ist das Ergebnis. Es hat mir Spaß gemacht, unter diesen Bedingungen zu fahren, und das mit dem zusätzlichen Druck für uns Fahrer, denn jeder kleine Fehler kann sich auf unsere Leistung auswirken. Es war heute wirklich schwierig da draußen, die Strecke war rutschig und es war fast unmöglich, die anderen Fahrer vor uns zu sehen. Ich bin froh, dass ich alles geben konnte. Meine Runden in Q3 waren etwas chaotisch, aber ich bin froh, dass ich das volle Potenzial des Autos ausschöpfen konnte. Was die Renn-pace angeht, waren wir in der Vergangenheit bei trockenen Bedingungen immer recht stark, also werden wir morgen versuchen, unser Bestes zu geben und um eine Top-10-Platzierung zu kämpfen.

Ich hatte das Gefühl, dass wir noch besser als P11 hätten sein können, aber ich hatte Pech mit dem Timing: Ich fuhr als einer der Ersten über die Linie, als sich die Strecke um fast eine Sekunde pro Runde verbesserte. Alle hinter mir hatten einen großen Vorsprung, so dass ich kein Glück hatte, und in Kurve eins hatte ich eine kleine Blockade, die mich etwas Zeit gekostet hat: Das ist schade, denn das Auto fühlte sich unter gemischten Bedingungen gut an. Die Strecke war ziemlich knifflig, vor allem in Q1, als die Sicht gegen Null ging. In Q2 verbesserte sich der Belag schnell und es fühlte sich wie eine große Verbesserung an. Die Bedingungen morgen werden ganz anders sein. Das haben wir bei der Abstimmung berücksichtigt, und ich erwarte, dass wir konkurrenzfähig sein werden: Wir können mit beiden Autos um einige gute Punkte kämpfen. Es ist gut, dass wir beide, Zhou und ich, dort oben stehen. Er hat heute einen guten Job gemacht, um zum ersten Mal in Q3 zu kommen.

We had quite good pace in the car today with our best Qualifying of the year. We made some changes to how we approached Qualifying and that paid off for us, so I’m happy with today and think we did a good job. Despite running into the barrier at Turn 6, I only damaged the front wing. Normally our race pace is better than our Qualifying, so I think we’re in a better starting position to do a good job tomorrow.
Points are obviously my goal and it’s satisfying that we’re near P10 so that’s my focus.

I think we had the pace to be a lot further up the grid so today is a painful one. It was a mistake from my side, I messed up and I am very sorry for my Team because I let them down today. I was struggling with the brakes a little, they were cold and I locked up at turn 10 on the lap before and flat spotted. That probably meant I was out of shape going into turn three. I could have maybe waited and took things more cautiously at the time but I was just trying to get temperature into the tyres and unfortunately I went over the limit, locked up and became a passenger. I am already looking ahead to tomorrow and I am hopeful we are able to recover and get into strong points. I will attack from lap one and see where we end up, we have a very quick race car.

Unfortunate to end the session, with a few technical problems and issues with the car. So I didn’t get a shot at trying to get into Q3, which is frustrating – but we’ll try to fix the problem and go into tomorrow. It’s a lot of laps, a track you can overtake on, and race on, so we’ll do our best to try to gain some positions and at least get into the points.

I’m extremely disappointed with that Qualifying, it’s very frustrating. FP3 was great for us so we knew we had the potential to do well this afternoon, but we just completely missed the mark in Quali. The start of Q1 was going well for us, and I was quite happy with our performance, but we came in to box and after that I had an issue with the brakes, which made it really difficult and I couldn’t get through to Q2. It’s obviously tough right now, but we’ll look at everything tonight and see how we can move forward tomorrow.

I do not know where our pace went. We did not change much between FP3 and qualifying – but we were too slow and we do not understand it. It is a pity, because we could have gone very well in these conditions. Given how the car felt out there, our lap times are not a surprise. The car was very difficult to drive – it was sliding and had a very poor rear end. We need to have a look at the data because something clearly did not work. Still, I am optimistic for tomorrow’s race. Today’s result puts us on the back foot, but we showed good pace in Friday practice, and we can come back from this.

We were pretty competitive in FP3 this morning, so it was disappointing not to follow that up in qualifying. In Q1, there was just no grip in the car, which meant we ended up stuck at the back of the pack. The yellow flag towards the end of the session also meant we could not further improve our lap-times – just when the track was one second per lap quicker as it dried out. It will be tough to start towards the back of the grid, but free practice showed our car has good pace, and we will try our best to get points tomorrow.

A very tricky Qualifying session with the conditions being extremely poor. Having to use the wet tyre is a bit of a challenge for everyone as they offer little to no grip. Whenever you can, you’d prefer to be on the inters but there was a bit too much standing water. I was having a lot of issues under braking that we need to try and understand.
When you don’t already have the grip in the corners and then you don’t have the trust that the car is going to stop makes it a very difficult session. It was better this morning in FP3, but we had limited running after hitting a groundhog which meant we had to make a couple of repairs. It’ll be challenging tomorrow but we’re hoping to move forward and maximise any opportunities.

That’s the best starting position we could secure this weekend. What’s important is that the feeling in the car was good and I could do a few more laps ahead of the race. We gained a place by qualifying ahead of Yuki (Tsunoda). It’s only one position, but every little detail can help on a weekend like this. Our focus is on giving it our all tomorrow.

It was always in the plan today to head out for just two laps, due to the engine penalty that I’m taking this weekend. The conditions for Qualifying were extremely bad, even compared to FP3 and there was definitely a lot more standing water, so we didn’t want to take any risks. Our plan has always been to concentrate on tomorrow throughout the practice sessions, so hopefully we’ve set-up the car in a strong way to allow us to overtake as much as possible in the race.