Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Overall, it was a pretty good qualifying. It’s been tough this weekend to get the tyres in a good window to push straight away, but it all worked out in Q3 and the last run was good. I’m very happy with the lap and to be on pole position here in Australia. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, it’s going to be an interesting race that’s for sure. We need a clean start, and after that, hopefully we can do a good job. I’ve been on the podium here before but this time I want to be on a different step.

Was für ein Qualifying für uns! Das Auto fühlte sich heute lebendig an, und wir hatten dieses Ergebnis überhaupt nicht erwartet. Die Runde am Ende war genau am Limit. Ich bin ein bisschen enttäuscht, dass wir nicht die Pole Position geholt haben. Aber das ist so eine Sache in diesem Sport. Die Erwartungen können sich schnell verändern. Gestern wären wir wahrscheinlich mit einem Platz unter den ersten Fünf zufrieden gewesen, aber heute fühlte sich das Auto fantastisch an. Das zeigt, dass wir noch Potenzial haben. In der Fabrik und hier in Melbourne wird sehr hart gearbeitet. Ich freue mich auf morgen. Es wird hart gegen Max, aber wir sind auf jeden Fall sehr glücklich, von P2 zu starten. 

Das war ein völlig unerwartetes Ergebnis und ich bin sehr glücklich und dankbar für P3. Meine zweite Runde war nicht so gut wie die erste. Ich habe im letzten Sektor ein wenig Zeit gewonnen, aber zu Beginn der Runde etwas verloren. Ich bin aber nicht enttäuscht und werde morgen so hart wie möglich arbeiten, um mich weiter zu verbessern. Ich bin stolz auf das Team. Wir arbeiten alle so hart wie möglich, um wieder nach vorne zu kommen, und so nah an Red Bull dran zu sein, ist unglaublich. Hoffentlich können wir ihnen morgen ein wenig das Leben schwer machen bieten. Und wir hoffen, dass das Wetter gut sein wird.

I am happy with fourth position today after a busy qualifying session. The circuit was difficult to judge at times, with changeable temperatures and weather. We seemed to improve in every session though and the car felt good to drive. Overall, I think it was probably our best qualifying session so far this season and our closest gap to pole position. We will see what we can do tomorrow because our race pace seems to be one of our strengths. We are expecting it to be difficult to overtake, but in these cooler conditions it will be an interesting race with lots of unknowns. The target is to score as many points as possible.

We had decent pace in qualifying today. Unfortunately there was a bit of confusion during the last preparation lap with other cars and that cost us a couple of tenths in Turn 1, as I arrived at it with the tyres a bit too cold. We have worked on different set up configurations during the weekend and tomorrow we’ll see what we can do during the race. It won’t be an easy one, but we will try to move up from our grid positions and bring home a good result!

It was fun out there today; it is a great track to push hard at and the car was handling well. I think the team put in a good performance to qualify fourth and sixth despite fairly challenging circumstances. It was tough to understand at which point the tyres would be in their peak operating window given the changing temperatures and we only had one set of tyres left for Q3, so there may have been a little more lap time in there. That being said, the field is incredibly tight and so we are lining up in a strong place to fight hard for the top positions tomorrow.

It hasn’t been the best of qualifyings. I was confident that I could put it all together on our last lap in Q3, but things did not go as planned as I didn’t do the  prep lap and we lost time. We will make sure we improve this as a team for the future.
We have tried different configurations of set-up and worked on our race pace, so I look forward to fighting for some positions tomorrow.

Today is pretty special; we optimised everything we had with a very good car, so I’m feeling really happy. We were struggling in the practice sessions to get the tyres to work but we went into qualifying and executed our plan which paid off, the tyres worked, and everything else fell into place. Looking at the progress the team has made in 12 months, knowing we’re able to fight for points each weekend, myself and the team live for that and motivation is high. We have a job to do tomorrow but we’re in the fight.

I would say it wasn’t a bad outcome to take ninth place in Qualifying today even if I felt there was a tenth or two left on the table. We did a good job to improve lap after lap and to reach Q3 – the first time for me in Melbourne – which is pleasing. It was very difficult to get the tyres into a good enough window and we had to keep improving on each lap. Tomorrow’s race will be interesting as most teams won’t have much knowledge on long run pace. We’ll see what we can do starting from ninth and we’ll give it our best to score as many points as we can.

It was definitely a positive qualifying and Q2 was especially very good. In Q3, I only had one new set of tires when some others maybe had two, but either way it wasn’t quite there. I wasn’t able to produce a lap like in Q2 but nevertheless, another top 10 finish which is positive and we’ll take that into tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty confident and feeling good about the race.

Unfortunately, what was shaping up to be a good day ended in some frustration. We had the pace for a strong Q3 showing but unfortunately met some traffic in the final two corners on my last Q2 push lap and that meant I lost some time. It’s on me for losing a couple of tenths in that case, after what was an otherwise good session for us. There are plenty of positives to take, though, as the performance is there, and we are starting just outside the top ten. It’s all very close between cars at the moment so it should be an exciting race. It’s definitely still all to play for and I’m now focused on maximising tomorrow’s race.

Qualifying was good, we built the pace well throughout and maximised the performance. Q1 was ok and we ended up in P15, but we were able to take another step each lap. For Q2, we had planned to do two push laps, but unfortunately, the weighbridge stopped me from completing my second lap. Considering I only had one flying lap, I'm pleased with it and the increase in performance by my team. I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow, we haven’t done any long-run testing, but we will aim to extract the maximum out of the car to be able to score points.

Today wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping. The cooler conditions just made us struggle a little bit more to be consistent and get the maximum out of the car. I’m not quite driving the way I want and to the level I want so I struggled to put everything together. But it’s still not a bad position to start and we can hopefully try to get into the points.

The car was good but I messed up the lap when it counted unfortunately, so P14. It’s not too far away from the top 10 so there’s still hope for tomorrow and Nico has shown what the car can do. It’s a shame on my side but I’m still looking forward to the race – we can fight.

It's been a positive session and it’s nice to get into Q2, especially with the new upgrades we brought this weekend. The changing conditions were quite tricky, in particular for the tyre warm-up, and in the last run in Q2, we didn’t adapt enough to what needed to be done. In practice, the tyres continued to improve, but as the track evolved, there was a little drop-off where you needed to make sure the tyres were ready for the last lap. I am a little gutted because we didn’t optimise the last run, but overall, it was a happy session. For tomorrow, we didn’t get much of an opportunity to test our long runs, but I am looking forward to racing and hopefully scoring points.

Obviously not quite what I wanted in Melbourne. The field is extremely tight and there’s not a lot in it. I was reasonably happy with my lap, unfortunately, it just wasn’t quite quick enough by the smallest of margins. It is what it is and we’ve got tonight to look at everything to put us in the best position to make up some places tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a clean grand prix.

It was a strange session for me, since I found some good pace in FP3 and then the car felt completely different in qualifying, quite the opposite to what we were aiming for. It’s frustrating, of course, not being up there, but I think I tried the best I could: it just was not enough to find these few tenths more in order to get into Q2. We did not really change the car from FP3 to Qualifying, and yet the difference I felt was significant, enough for me to have to change my driving. With regard to the race, you never know what might happen here: I obviously would prefer to start from further up the grid, but all we can do is giving our best and pull off a good strategy in order to make some places up.

It wasn’t the smoothest of qualifying sessions and I did struggle to find those last couple of tenths. I felt like I was building up nicely and the session was coming to me - I was getting quicker and quicker – and was on a definite good enough lap for Q2 there at the end and just made a mistake in sector 3. We’ll start to see results improve when I put everything together. We haven’t had many laps this weekend with the electrical issues in FP1 and missing out on FP2 because of that, but we were capable of Q2 today. It’s hard to tell what car we have for tomorrow as we haven’t done any consecutive laps but generally, we have a pretty quick car in race trim, especially on the straights, so we know we can fight the people around us. Tomorrow is about being procedurally perfect, having a good start, good race pace and we’ll look to make some moves.

The upgrades we brought to Melbourne seem to be working as we expected, so there’s no denying we expected more from qualifying. This is, of course, not where we wanted to be, and there are definitely a lot of questions about this qualifying session. We seemed to lack pace, and on top of that, I also encountered a bit of traffic on the final lap, when I felt the best grip from the tyres, so there wasn’t much more we could do. At least, starting from the back opens some more opportunities with the strategy, so let’s see what we can achieve during the race. These are far from being ideal starting positions, but we’ll investigate what went wrong and regroup to go for it again tomorrow.

Today was a day to forget. We have a technical issue that we’re trying to get to the bottom of, we had the same issue this morning and we thought we fixed it, but as soon as I hit the braking zone it was clear we hadn’t. It’s very unfortunate what happened today but together as a team, we’ll do our best to fix it ahead of tomorrow’s race. On a track that is hard to overtake, it will be tough, but I will do what I can to get some good points for the team and work hard to get us into a good position.