Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Dieses Ergebnis ist ein Beleg für all die harte Arbeit, die jeder leistet, und für die Fortschritte, die wir als Team erzielt haben. Das Auto hat sich seit dem letzten Update in Austin großartig angefühlt, aber ich hatte nicht erwartet, dass wir so eine gute Pace haben würden. Natürlich ist es schwer zu sagen, wie Max mit den Soft-Reifen zurechtgekommen wäre - aber es ist trotzdem ein tolles Gefühl, als Sieger hervorzugehen. Es war ein schöner Kampf. Im Sprint muss man das Risiko und den Ertrag immer abwägen, und ich wollte nicht zu viel riskieren und am Ende von hinten starten - aber ich wollte auch unbedingt diesen Sieg holen. Lewis hat einen großartigen Job gemacht, indem er von P8 nach vorne gefahren ist, und es ist verrückt, dass wir nun beide von vorne starten. Das wird spannend. Ich bin mir sicher, dass Max morgen schnell sein wird, aber wir befinden uns in der guten Position, in der wir die Strategien möglicherweise aufteilen und um den Sieg kämpfen können.

We had a solid pace, so we were able to overtake a few cars and then I defended well to finish P2. Tomorrow we can expect a very busy race as I will have to serve the penalty and will start from seventh.
We still have some work to do if we want to fight at the very front, as Mercedes is also very competitive here. However, I’m confident we can run a good race and I think we are up for a very interesting battle. Now it’s full focus on tomorrow.

Ich bin sehr glücklich, hier zu stehen - das war bislang eine unglaubliche Woche. Es war ein schwieriges Qualifying für mich, aber das Publikum an der Strecke war heute fantastisch. Zunächst einmal herzlichen Glückwunsch an George. Für mich ging es im Sprint hingegen darum, mich von P8 nach vorne zu arbeiten, und dieses Ergebnis ist für alle unsere Teammitglieder in der Fabrik und hier an der Strecke, die in diesem Jahr so hart gearbeitet haben. Dass wir morgen in der ersten Reihe stehen, ist unglaublich: Von dort aus können wir als Team zusammenarbeiten und hoffentlich die Autos hinter uns halten. Wir werden so hart wie möglich pushen, und wenn wir einen guten Reifenabbau und hoffentlich gutes Wetter haben, dann erwartet uns ein schöner Kampf. 

It was a really difficult race for us today, I honestly didn’t expect that type of performance. To be that slow in such a short race wasn’t great, maybe the mediums were slower than I expected they would be, but at that pace, I don’t know if the softs would have got me where we wanted. We need to understand why our degradation was so bad too. There wasn’t much I could do, the front and the rear were sliding around a lot – I had no grip. At the moment I’m not feeling too confident for tomorrow but let’s see what we can do overnight, there’s a lot of data to analyse.

There is plenty to analyse tonight because today wasn’t great, it was a poor afternoon out there. For some reason we had higher degradation than we expected and generally the car balance wasn’t there. I was expecting a lot more pace and it was very difficult to make any progress, I couldn’t fight with Lewis or Carlos ahead of me, and in the end I couldn’t get close enough to Max. We are behind Mercedes and Ferrari this weekend, they are very strong and seem to have a lot more pace than us. We lost a lot of performance from FP2 to the Sprint race, I felt a lot happier this morning with the car. I think if we continue with this trend we could struggle in the race, so we need to improve, get back into our rhythm and understand what happened today. Hopefully we can turn it around.

Starting from P10, my target today was to gain as many positions as possible without taking too many risks. That’s exactly what I did and with the good pace we showed today, I will push as hard as I can in the race to bring home a strong result for the team.

Tough day today but our main objective was to pass Magnussen, and we did that, so I’m happy. We didn’t really have a chance to compete against the top three teams and I really wasn’t expecting more than P7. I found it tough today. I’ve been unwell, it was hot and this track is hard work – but we had a good race. We’re in a decent position, and if we can get both cars into the points tomorrow, it could be a really good day for us. We’ll work hard tonight, and see what we can do.

I really enjoyed today – and we got a point, and that’s also a very important point given our battle for eighth with AlphaTauri. We knew we weren’t going to win this race and that wasn’t really the aim. It was all about enjoying staring from the pole position and then really trying to get a point out of it. The dream was to try and finish ahead of Lando (Norris) just behind all the big cars, that didn’t quite happen, but we’re still happy with the point for eighth. We start from there tomorrow and that’s a position we’d be very happy about in regular qualifying. So, we start from inside the top 10 and hopefully we can go for points tomorrow too.

I was fighting hard out there today – a few of us were stuck behind Esteban [Ocon], who I think had some damage, so that lost us some time. Without that, I might have been able to catch Kevin [Magnussen] before the end – and that would have earned us a point. Overall, however, I think we can be happy with today: our pace was good, we looked after the tyres well and we were making up places. Everything worked well today – let us see what we can do tomorrow.

I’m happy with today, starting 12th and finishing 10th, it was our main goal today to recover some positions ahead of tomorrow’s race. The start of the race was good, it was tricky trying to reach the end on the Softs, but we’ve finished in a strong position. We had some nice battles out there and I don’t think we could’ve done much better. We’re in the top 10, we know we’re capable of fighting up there, so we’ll try to come away with some points.

It was fun today, definitely fun. There were lots of battles. I want to watch it again to see because I gained spots and then lost spots, so I don’t know if that’s positioning. I’m sure I could have done some things better – but yeah, then I found my way back through, so it was decent. I guess when you start in the midfield, it can yo-yo a little bit. I think I’ve still got to find a couple of tenths, just to help out for tomorrow and put me a bit more in the fight, so we’ll see what we can do tonight – but we gained some spots, so that’s positive and obviously puts us much closer to the points tomorrow.

We had a good opening lap which definitely helped get us into position and our pace didn’t look too bad either, so we were able to fight a bit. We had a small issue with the engine, so that’s something we need to look at, but we’ll find out how much pace we lost through it. We’ve started further back before and got into the points so if everything goes well I’m sure we have a lot of potential.

Our pace was actually quite good today, and we can be satisfied to gain a few positions back and a better place on the grid ahead of tomorrow. At first, I thought this would be a difficult afternoon as I didn’t have an easy opening lap – I lost a few positions after being boxed in and I also went wide in turn five. I feared we were just going to remain there for most of the race, but we were fairly quick and could overtake quite a few cars on our way to P13. The car felt good, so if we work on our lap one performance and keep our position at the start, we will have a very good chance to be fighting for the top ten tomorrow.

I gave everything I had in the sprint and we’ll be starting tomorrow in a much better place than we were today. I lost a couple of positions at the start, but I had good momentum after that and our pace looked ok. We were able to make up places and keep making progress until the end of the race. The longer the stint went, the better our pace became, and this gives me confidence about tomorrow: the objective is to make it into the top ten and I think it’s a wholly realistic one. We had better pace than the cars around us today, so let’s bring home some points tomorrow.

I managed to gain some positions at the start but unfortunately, I didn’t have the pace after that and I really struggled. It’s been a difficult weekend in general, as I’ve really lacked grip, and there’s not much you can change after Qualifying in the Sprint format, which makes things harder. I don’t think tomorrow will be that easy, but I’ll do whatever I can to try and make my way forward.

I made a good start and gained a few positions on the first lap. Everything was looking positive, but then I started to lose a little bit of pace as the race unfolded – and that meant I dropped a couple of places battling in the midfield. We need to look at what happened there. We go again tomorrow – and anything can happen at this place.

Today was not the day we needed. We were optimistic leading up today’s Sprint Qualifying after a good first Qualifying session on Friday but, unfortunately, the racing incident on the first lap very much ended our race today. The car damage was extensive and we lost significant performance and there was nothing left to do after that. It is really a shame as we were performing well this weekend and needed all the points we could get for our championship battle. We’ll need to pull together as a team to fight our way through the field tomorrow and get back into the points.

It was not the Sprint Qualifying we wanted today. Unfortunately, I touched with Esteban on the first of the lap of the race and we lost the momentum from there. With the deficit lost in the pit-stop, the Sprint is too short to recover places. On the positives the car is very fast, and we have good race pace, so all is not lost this weekend just yet. We start in fifteenth for the race on Sunday and we have a chance to score points and that’s the goal. We both tried to do our best and unfortunately today it didn’t work out. We will think about it tomorrow and try to score points for the team.

It was a very lonely afternoon out there. We found some damage on the rear of the car after FP2, which we fixed before the sprint race. However, after two or three laps the car began to feel difficult again. I ran over some debris as well, which caused some significant damage to the floor.

I don’t know what happened to be honest, but I think it was the debris caused by Fernando and Ocon on the main straight. Ultimately, from the start, it was not good with low grip and front locking every corner for the first laps, so we really need to have a good look at the car overnight.