Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

With track conditions changing throughout, it was a tricky but exciting qualifying. We were very quick on the Intermediates in Q1 and Q2, then had to start again from zero on the slicks in Q3. There were some damp spots of tarmac here and there and you really had to adapt to the track evolution.
The feeling in the car has been great all weekend and I look forward to racing here again tomorrow.

I think we have done a solid job today, the Team made great calls and we managed to get an excellent result in the end. I am a bit disappointed to be so close to Charles on such a long lap because it makes you think I could have done better in so many places but at the same time it was so tricky out there with the conditions. It was our worst Friday of the season yesterday; we didn’t have any mileage and we had issues with set-up too, so we didn’t have a read on things, but we went back over things and have come out strong. I will try everything I possibly can to win tomorrow, I think the start will be very important so I will try everything but if that doesn’t work, I have 61 laps more, then it is a long race ahead, let’s see what happens.

Ich habe sehr hart gepusht und es war unglaublich knapp. Es war wirklich schwierig, in eine Position zu kommen, in der wir um den ersten Platz kämpfen konnten, und auf der letzten Runde hatte ich einfach nicht mehr genug Grip. Als wir hierher kamen, wussten wir nicht, wie nah wir an diesem Wochenende dran sein würden. Wir wussten, dass wir stärker sein würden als in Monza, aber wir wussten nicht genau, wie viel stärker. Nichtsdestotrotz bin ich dankbar, morgen in der zweiten Reihe zu stehen. Und ich bin dem Team dankbar, dass es weiter Druck macht. Wir lassen den Kopf unten und hoffen auf einen positiven Tag morgen.

It was a challenging qualifying today, one of the toughest of the season due to the conditions and the amount of traffic at a street circuit like this.
I think we did a decent session overall, but it’s frustrating to see that a tenth and a half cost us four positions, especially after reviewing my fastest lap, which was looking very good for pole until a snap at turn 16.
We’ll look into it and check what we could have done better, but now we need to focus on tomorrow. We can still get a very good result from here and we know how long and eventful these Singapore races can get. I’m ready to fight for everything.

To qualify in the top five was a great result today and I feel like we maximised the tricky conditions. The track was changing all the time and so you had to guess what the grip was going to be going into the next corner. I had confidence in the car, which is needed at a street circuit like this and that helped me understand the conditions and know when we needed to switch to dry tyres. I hope for a straightforward race tomorrow, but let’s see what will happen with the weather. We are only two places away from the podium positions, so if we stay focused and have a clean start then we’ll be in a strong position.

A good qualifying, if very tough. It was probably the toughest conditions of the whole season. There are just such fine limits between it going wrong and it going right. I think I took a good, but the correct amount of risk, and it paid off with a P6, which is better than we were expecting. Tough, challenging, but very happy with how today has turned out. A good position for tomorrow and hopefully we can turn it into some good points.

It was a lot of fun out there today. It was really tricky in every session with these conditions, sliding around everywhere, but I must say I’m super happy with P7. If you look at how our weekend was going so far, we didn’t look so good, but thanks to the rain this evening our day got a lot better. We know how important your starting position is here in Singapore, so being in P7 is really positive, with Lando and Fernando just ahead of us, so we’ll see what we can do from there. I think we have a big opportunity tomorrow to score points with both cars, so we need to utilise this to help in our Championship battle, and we’ve seen today that we can do well in these difficult conditions so I’m hoping for some more rain.

We couldn’t finish the push lap today because we wouldn’t have had enough fuel in the car, it was a mistake that we didn’t see coming throughout the session. We were a little surprised by the additional lap at the end, we didn’t expect to have to do that. I was on for a good lap when I aborted before starting the last lap, it might have been pole. In hindsight we should have finished the penultimate lap, instead I had to abort two laps, but hindsight is a great thing. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow but I think it will be a frustrating race, starting eighth around here is similar to Monaco, there aren’t many overtaking opportunities and it’s really hard to pass.

It’s been looking positive all weekend but not this positive. P9 was a bit more than we were expecting but it’s great because qualifying in Singapore is very important. I’m super happy that we got a good result here and the team did an amazing job. My new race engineer, Mark Slade, did a fantastic job coming back after some time not running a car as a race engineer, and he was flawless. At the end, in Q3, I told the team that I didn’t know what we should do and to make a decision, and they made absolutely the right ones. It was great just to be able to put all responsibility on them and they pulled it off.

I’m pleased we’re starting tomorrow in the top 10, I think it was a really good recovery from FP3, and we thought it would be really difficult to get to Q3, so I’m happy with today. I always knew Qualifying was going to be tough here physically, for both me and the team, and the conditions made it even harder, but everyone did a really great job and it’s positive to have both cars up there in Quali. It’s a bit of a shame that I started Q3 on the Inters, as I think with another lap on the slicks I could’ve continued to improve, but that all comes down to experience and I’ll learn from this. We now look to the race, it seems to be a bit cooler again tomorrow, so hopefully that’ll help and we’re able to put it altogether and finish with both cars in the points.

The switch to slicks in Q2 was a gamble today, but it looked like it was going to be the right call. However, I locked up into Turn 16, where it was still wet, after being a second up on my previous best. I still think it was the right thing to do. It is always challenging in these conditions, where you are having to judge how much grip will be at the corner before you arrive there, especially with parts of the circuit having a different surface to other sections. We have good pace to be able to challenge for points tomorrow and I am confident that we will be in the mix for the top 10.

I think overall we really felt a big step forward compared to yesterday and we had a good feeling in FP3. For qualifying, unfortunately it dried out a bit more than I was hoping for. On that last lap I overcooked the tires going into the second sector so maybe some tools that I used just weren’t right for the conditions, so the rears were moving around a lot and I didn’t make the time up that I wanted to. I’m happy about the feeling and the improvement and the work the team and I have done. If it’s raining tomorrow there are definitely chances because our car is strong in the wet, so let’s do the rain dance and hope there are some droplets coming.

I think with hindsight it is easy to say that we made the switch to dry tyres too early, but it was a very close call. We discussed it and made the decision together and maybe I should have trusted my instincts a bit more. When I was on the soft tyres in the final moments of Q2, I had to really attack on the dry parts of the lap. I had a lock-up early on in the lap, but I think the final sector of the lap was still too wet anyway. For tomorrow, it would be helpful to have some more rain to mix things up again, but I think we have quite good race pace so we will try our best to challenge for points-paying positions.

Overall, I can be quite happy with how things have gone so far during the weekend, considering it is my first time in Singapore; even though I feel like we could’ve done a bit more in qualifying, I have enjoyed driving here so far. I was quite happy with Q1, while, on the contrary, Q2 has been a little frustrating from my side. On my first flying lap I had to slow down because of a yellow flag, and I set my lap time on the second push lap. Then we decided to take a gamble and switch to the slicks to try to get into Q3, but unfortunately there was no grip, and I couldn’t improve anymore. I think with the inters we could have had a chance to get into the top ten today. Let’s see how the weather will be tomorrow, we seem to have a good car in dry conditions and, besides that, everything can happen here. We kept the momentum from Monza to Singapore even though the tracks have a completely different layout, and I’m happy for that.

We looked good in the dry, so to go out in Q1 is disappointing. Conditions were quite tricky, the track was constantly changing with patches of dry and wet, but in the end we were quite unlucky with the timing: I was among the first to take the flag and, on the last lap, my tyres started to go. We had planned to do the whole of Q1 on one set of inters and it was hard to tell whether we should stop: when we realised what was happening, it was too late to pit, so we couldn’t improve when the track was at its best. Starting 16th is going to be a challenge, especially as this is the second hardest track on which to overtake: but you never know – this is Singapore, everything can happen and I believe in miracles!

It’s obviously disappointing to be out in Q1 but to be honest it’s more frustrating that it didn’t feel like the same car as we had this morning. I know the track is a bit drier now but the slight change in conditions basically made us much less competitive. That’s where it’s really so hard to get a read on it. This morning I was quite comfortable with the car, all things considered, and even my first lap in Q1, I felt better than I did at the end when the track started to dry. That’s obviously somewhere we miss out, when the track does improve, and we can’t really run with it. So that’s really costly and I’m more disappointed in that fact than I am about the overall position. There were no big mistakes or anything like that, it was simply that we couldn’t go quick enough through the corners and make the most of it. We’ll see what happens tomorrow though with strategy and the weather and move on from there.

It was a difficult Qualifying on my side of the garage today and I’m disappointed to be out in Q1, especially as we have had strong pace all weekend. I sensed an issue with the brakes, which hampered our session today. The positive is the car is strong and the aim now is to use that pace to make our way into the points positions tomorrow. Overtaking is tough here but as always we’ll be pushing hard to secure a good team result.

It was a tricky qualifying session today. The wet normally calms things down, however, this track is so hot and the tyres are so hot, so it’s difficult to manage the tyres. We were quite hard on our tyres and struggled with overheating, as well as with downforce, and when the track is drying out on wet tyres, it’s tough not to slide everywhere. Definitely a frustrating qualifying, however, I think our long run pace in FP2 was actually pretty reasonable, so we’ll figure out a way to get into that pace again for the race. I’m feeling as ready as I can be for tomorrow so let’s see what we can do.

Coming into this weekend we knew that it was going to be difficult for us as a team with the track being one of the least suited to our package.
We were hoping the rain was going to make a bit of a difference today as it has in the past. Unfortunately, we weren’t getting the correct feelings and responses in the car that we know we need to have to be competitive in the wet. Taking the time sheets away it’s still an exciting track to drive in both conditions. We’ll see what tomorrow brings and look to capitalise on any opportunities.

Ich hatte mit einem Bremsproblem zu kämpfen, das mich in den Kurven beeinträchtigte. Der Grip fühlte sich gut an, ich kam nur nicht um die Kurven. Ich untersteuerte ständig, was sehr schade ist. Ich glaube nicht, dass wir wegen dieses Problems in Q3 besser gewesen wären. Wir haben einige Hinweise in den Daten gefunden, und ich hoffe, dass wir das Problem bis morgen beheben können. Natürlich ist es für mich und das ganze Team enttäuschend, denn das Auto sah hier stark aus. Lewis war wirklich schnell, aber leider hat es bei mir nicht sollen sein. Alles in allem ist es ein ermutigendes Wochenende für uns, aber natürlich sind wir hier, um Punkte zu holen, und schlussendlich ist dies eine Strecke, auf der es auf das Qualifying ankommt. Glücklicherweise scheint der Reifenabbau stark zu sein, weshalb es morgen ein Rennen mit zwei Stopps werden könnte.