Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

I’m extremely happy today! Securing my first pole at Silverstone in the wet is something special that I will never forget. The whole qualifying was very tricky, and every lap was a new adventure because of the track conditions. Finding grip and traction was a huge challenge and every lap you had to adapt. On the very last attempt I went for it and managed to put a good lap together that gave us pole.
The confidence for tomorrow is high and hopefully we can bring our good pace from Friday into the race. It will be a very tight battle with our competitors, but I’m ready for it and I’m sure we can put together a strong race and fight for the win. Let’s race.

It was a good qualifying, I felt comfortable out there. It was obviously very slippery on track, my 360-degree spin in Q3 was a new tyre warming technique [laughs], but overall I think we did a good job, we have a great race car. Q3 is sometimes a bit of a lottery, especially in the wet, so I couldn’t improve on my final lap as there was a yellow flag, I think that cost me pole position today. As you can see it’s all very tight at the front at the Ferraris are very strong. It will be a close battle tomorrow but hopefully we can finish ahead of them. The car is good in the wet and the dry, so if the car is working well during the race tomorrow then we should have a good chance of winning.

Unfortunately, I spun on that last lap in Q3 and didn’t put it together as I wanted to, so I am disappointed, but I am happy that Carlos finished on pole.
I felt confident in the car and we were quite competitive, even in these conditions which is where we struggled quite a lot for the past two years. It’s good to see that we’ve found some consistency in the wet.
Strategies will be different between teams tomorrow, so whether it will be one or two stops, I hope we can gain something by making good moves and fight for a 1-2 for our team.

In these changeable conditions, today was a good result for us. I obviously wanted more and I am not fully satisfied but we can fight from there and I look forward. It wasn’t ideal but on the other hand I am not too disappointed because towards the end of Q3 I had Stroll right ahead of me, so my last two laps were not ideal and maybe there was a bit more in it without that hold up. We found the issue in the car that was troubling us on Friday and in the race we will be a lot more competitive. It will be important to stay in the mix and have a strong pace in the race tomorrow, then things can look very different. We have made good progress so I will be confident hopefully we are able to give a hard time to the Ferraris, it is going to be tough but we will fight hard.

Das Team hat unglaublich hart daran gearbeitet, das Auto zu verbessern, und wir haben einen Haufen neuer Aero-Teile am Wagen, der sich dadurch verbessert hat. Aber wir haben noch immer Bouncing in den Hochgeschwindigkeitskurven, wo vor allem der Red Bull von uns wegzieht. Im Regen kämpften wir um die erste Startreihe; bis zur vorletzten Runde waren wir ganz vorne dabei. Wir nahmen etwas Pace heraus, um die Batterie aufzuladen und auf der letzten Runde in einen rassigeren Modus zu gehen, aber das war genau dann, als der Regen stärker wurde, und das kostete uns Zeit. Ich war so Presse-Information 02. Juli 2022 hoffnungsvoll, denn wir haben hier dieses unglaubliche Publikum und waren im Kampf dabei, ich hatte ein gutes Gefühl. Wir haben ein großartiges Auto fürs Rennen und P5 ist nicht der schlechteste Startplatz. Bei den vergangenen Rennen wäre ich mit P5 zufrieden gewesen, aber es ist der britische Grand Prix, da hofft man auf mehr. Ich werde versuchen, morgen etwas Besonderes auf die Beine zu stellen. Ich weiß die Unterstützung hier wirklich zu schätzen - die Fans waren unglaublich.

I’m very happy. P6 is the best we could have done today. I kind of messed up my last lap, but I was still very happy with P6, and it’s been a good job by the team. I’m happy with how I did today, I think I got the laps in when I needed to, and P6 is ahead of at least one of the cars we know is quicker than us. It’s a good position for tomorrow and hopefully we can stay around there for the race.

There was more to come today and unfortunately we didn’t maximise our last laps in Q3. On my first lap in Q3 we were in first, so it was going pretty well. Then, we crossed the line for our last lap with the battery nearly empty, so we couldn’t unlock the full potential. I feel like we could have perhaps qualified inside the top five today. Tomorrow, we don’t know if it will rain or not, so let’s see if we can maximise our position and score points. The car feels good in the wet and dry and all of the data from the factory shows we’ve made a good step forward with our upgrades this weekend.

Im Q1 fühlte ich mich wirklich gut im Auto, sehr zuversichtlich, aber im Q2 fühlte es sich etwas schlechter an, und im Q3 kämpfte ich mit dem Vertrauen ins Auto, machte einen Fehler und es war schwer, mich davon zu erholen. Die Bedingungen waren für alle schwierig, aber ich bin etwas enttäuscht, dass wir kein besseres Qualifying hatten. Wir hatten nicht erwartet, um die Pole zu kämpfen, aber es war mehr möglich. Im dritten Training sahen wir sehr stark aus und hatten im Trockenen eine gute Pace. Wir hatten das Gefühl, dass wir gute Fortschritte machten. Wir wissen, dass wir ein viel schnelleres Rennauto haben als im Qualifying, also werden wir sehen, was wir morgen tun können. Von P8 aus zu starten, bringt uns in Rückstand, also müssen wir so schnell wie möglich an den Autos aus dem Mittelfeld vorbeikommen. Im Trockenen und bei der Rennpace haben wir das Gefühl, dass wir ein Auto haben, das mit Red Bull und Ferrari mithalten kann, also werden wir morgen alles geben.

Qualifying was a challenge, but I would say I didn’t do too bad for a rookie! It was my first time driving in F1 in Silverstone in the wet, the conditions were very different from yesterday but today has been good, I felt like I was progressing and improving my time lap after lap. It was particularly tricky out there between Q2 and Q3, when it was getting damp and there was a lot of standing water, but I managed to keep the car on track and reckon I was able to maximize everything I had today, so I can consider myself satisfied of the job done. It feels amazing to score two back-to-back Q3 appearances, I feel like I’m growing as a Formula 1 driver and I am really happy about that. I am looking forward to tomorrow, the track conditions should be dry, and I think we have the opportunity to score some points, which is always our main target. We have good potential, the grid will be super close, but I reckon we are looking good and both cars will be able to challenge for points tomorrow.

A very special day in tricky conditions.To get through to Q2 was a great achievement and a nice confidence boost, and then Q3 was more than we could’ve hoped for. Straight out of the pits things felt good and I was getting into a rhythm. The team did a great job in Q1 and Q2 of putting me in the right place on the track when I needed to. We saw how important that was for Q2 getting that lap in at the right time before the track got worse with the weather. Coming off in Q3 was frustrating but overall a great team effort and a satisfying day. We have to be realistic going in tomorrow as we’re out of position with faster cars being behind us. We need to be very strategic in how we approach the race. It’ll be a race of attrition with how we manage the tyres. Anything is possible so we’ll focus on our own race and maximise any opportunities that may come our way.

It’s been extremely hard this weekend in the practice sessions. We came here knowing we’d struggle on this track, we haven’t been able to find many solutions, but our Quali was well executed, and we need to be content with P11. Obviously, we can’t be fully happy with such a performance, we want more than that, but that’s where our car is currently on this kind of tracks. I’ll be doing a rain dance tonight and hoping we can have anything other than dry conditions to help us out the most in the race tomorrow.

It’s been a challenging day for me: conditions were tricky, changing all the time and it felt like every lap the track was a bit different. Q1 was good, but, once I got into Q2, with more water on track, I struggled to get enough temperature in the tyres. That was a bit of a downward spiral – I was sliding around and the car kept snapping, which made me lose even more temperature. Still, we are in P12 and the points are not too far away: we expect a dry race tomorrow, and I am confident we can make some gains. Our car is quite strong in the races, so we can put up a bit of a fight.

We expected it to be difficult to get through to Q2 today, based on the performance we had in free practice, so I’ll take today’s result. The conditions were tough out there, but the team did a really good job and I’m happy with how we finished, I think it’s a big positive for us considering the weekend we’d been having so far. I’m hoping we won’t have rain for the race tomorrow, as my car is set-up more for the dry, so hopefully it stays dry, and we’ll be able to put it altogether to aim for the points. I’m looking forward to the race, it’ll be difficult, but I think we can still have a good opportunity tomorrow.

I’m obviously disappointed with the result in the end today. I think in hindsight I needed the lap to be put in early because the track was at its best early-on but then I struggled to get the lap in when it counted. I think the driest lap I found, I went off, so there was a dry line there, I just caught some of the wet and lost the lap. For the most part, it felt just like I didn’t get the lap in when the conditions were at their best and that’s what cost me more than anything else today. So, that’s on me. It’s put us quite a bit back on the grid, so we have a lot of work to do tomorrow but we will come out swinging.

It’s been one of those tricky days for us today. A battery-related loss of power at the beginning of Q2 stopped us from being competitive in the session and we were out in fifteenth, which is not great ahead of tomorrow’s race. I’m still positive, though, as we’ve started from further down this year and scored points, so the goal will be the same tomorrow. We’re looking into the issue now and I trust that the team will get on top of it, and we’ll be in good shape for the race. We can overtake here at Silverstone, so we’ll have to take all available opportunities to have a decent result.

“The conditions were actually okay today despite the rain, with the car feeling good but there was less grip on the second set of tyres. It’s been a bit different to drive with the new updates but in FP3 I was feeling quite comfortable with the car, even in the rain in Q1, it felt OK. At the end of Q1 we opted to do a cool down lap but we lost too much tyre temperature. The track was starting to dry, and everyone was starting to get faster, but I just couldn’t find enough grip. It was a tight call but in hindsight, I don’t think the cool down lap was the best choice, but we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.
We do have a good car, so we need to go back and analyse it.

Mick was looking good in FP3, I didn’t have a good one, but I could see what the car could do so I was confident. Then it rained, and that made me even more confident but for some reason we just didn’t have the pace today in the wet. It’s interesting, we’ve been quick in the wet a couple of times this year, but it’s been on very different tracks to this one. There’s something to learn from that so we’ll try again tomorrow and see if we can fight our way back into the top-10.

A Saturday performance like this makes Sunday really difficult. But all we can do is turn the page and see what we can do tomorrow. We did not have the pace today and we know we can do better. We need to learn our lessons, understand where we are losing out, and improve for next time.

Unfortunately we had an issue with the car, it seemed like something with the steering wasn’t right which is the last thing you want, especially in these changing conditions. We’ll analyze what happened, but I think that was a big reason why we didn’t make the step-up into Q2. I’m down for any conditions tomorrow, whether it’s wet or dry – it’s fun in any conditions – so I’m looking forward to it.

At the end of the session, we tried a new set of Intermediate tyres, but I had a terrible out-lap getting caught in traffic and it was really difficult to generate enough temperature at that point. With only one push-lap at the end of the session, my tyres were not warm enough to be able to put in a respectable qualifying time. I am disappointed to be starting at the back of the grid, but hopefully the weather will improve and we will have a more successful race.