Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

We had a strong day out there today. It was quite tight at the start with Charles but after that we could focus on our own race. The pace of the car was really good, a bit better than we expected, we looked after our tyres quite well. Starting in P6 tomorrow will be interesting, we'll try and stay out of trouble on the first lap and then we'll take it step by step making our way through the field. Hopefully we can have some fun out there tomorrow.

That was a fun race! I made a good start into turn one and had a really good battle with Charles (Leclerc). Running in second, I was then focused on trying to get closer to Max (Verstappen) in those early stages. Their pace at the moment is undeniable though so I wasn’t able to get close enough to challenge him. We’ve still got a long way to go to equal the pace he showed throughout the Sprint. Nonetheless, I’m really happy to be back on the podium.

Starting ahead of Max tomorrow is helpful. Ultimately, I think he will be breathing down our necks before too long given the pace that he had today. I think that will open up a good fight though between ourselves, the Ferraris and the McLarens. We’re all quite similar in pace this weekend by the looks of it so I hope we get to have a good battle tomorrow. Keeping Max behind would be awesome but if not, we’ll do everything we can to finish on the podium and bring home good points.

There was an opportunity at the start so I went for it and tried to overtake Max (Verstappen) in the first corner. I lost a position to Lewis (Hamilton) there, Mercedes were a bit stronger in terms of race pace than we expected and so now we have to work on being a step ahead for the race.
We have quite a lot of data available for analysis, as we ran our two cars on different strategies, which helped us to gain an insight into the behaviour of the Soft compound. Hopefully this will give us an advantage tomorrow and we will do everything we can to bring home the win.

That was a good race, despite the tough beginning. With Carlos starting on Softs it took a few laps to get past him, but when I did, the pace looked very, very strong. A lot better than the Ferrari. One lap more and we would have had Charles and P3. There’s a lot of positive signs for tomorrow. A good day, and good preparation for tomorrow’s Grand Prix.

I took off quicker than I thought I was going to and unfortunately that did hurt us a bit. We started well and had some good pace but we the degradation was a bit higher than I ideally wanted, so we were not able to push how we would have wanted to and got caught in a lot of dirty air. We need to sort the degradation issues for the race because that will be important, we may be doing things that are hurting us there. We have to make sure we understand where we can improve the balance come tomorrow too and work hard overnight, we need more pace than we showed today. We have some tricks we can do and have some good directions to go in. Tomorrow will be an interesting one, with a lot of interesting battles out there.

Those 19 laps were tough. Choosing the Soft was a risk that we opted to take, even though we knew we would struggle with pace and degradation at the end. I started well and some good overtaking took us to P4 in the first laps, but from then on came the difficult part, all about tyre management and defending.
Keeping Lando (Norris) and Sergio (Perez) behind was very tough and the battle with George (Russell) wasn’t easy at all, but we managed to bring it home and score some points.
Now we focus on tomorrow, we’ve got much more info to analyse and we’ll try to maximise our Sunday.

I’m really happy today. We had a strong race from ninth, passed Alex [Albon] straight away and then I did a nice move on Oscar [Piastri] for eighth. After that, I had to try to keep up with George [Russell] and Carlos [Sainz] ahead knowing George had a penalty and that I needed to keep a five-second gap. The pace was good in general, even if we had a bit of tyre degradation towards the end. There is definitely some good things for us to analyse from the race today and the two points is a nice bonus. The hard work will continue ahead of tomorrow and we will see how we can put ourselves in the mix for strong points. Right now, I’m pleased with our pace, and I’m fully focused on tomorrow’s race.

It’s been a bit of a scrappy day for me. Both penalties that I received today were fair. I was unable to give the position back to Piastri in the Sprint as Gasly had already passed him. If I let Piastri past, I would have had to let Gasly past too. It was a bit of a shame as it was an optimistic move from myself. Ultimately though, there aren’t a huge amount of points up for grabs on a Saturday.

We’re in a good place to fight for a podium from P5 tomorrow. It’s going to be an interesting race. The tyres felt good in the Sprint but that was helped by the cloudy conditions and the temperature dropping a little. It will be close between a one and a two-stop tomorrow and we’re going to have to be dynamic in order to react to the situation. We should have a good fight with the Ferraris and the McLaren of Norris. We may have the speed on them, but they are starting ahead so we will see what we can do.

We went for it in the Sprint, as we were looking much stronger than yesterday, so we gave ourselves the biggest opportunity to score points. It’s so tight out there and to just miss out is frustrating but at the same time, it was a good race and we can’t discredit that. Obviously to finish P9, just outside of the points is what makes it frustrating. The tyres are interesting here and if I were to do it over, I would do things a bit differently, but this track can be difficult and my tyres started to deg, then came back at the end allowing us to push and try close the gap. We have race pace, so starting P18 tomorrow, hopefully we can fight the cars around us.

Not an ideal Sprint. We had a lot of battles at the start. I went through the tyres extremely quickly and they had overheated a lot. So, not quite the result we wanted, but on the positive side we’ve learned a lot for the race tomorrow, which is where the majority of points are earned. We’ll switch focus to the Grand Prix now and aim to move forward tomorrow.

It’s not been the smoothest of days on our side here in Austin. The Sprint Shootout started strongly and we were comfortably through SQ1. We did not have enough to reach the top ten and we will look into the reasons why as that would have put us in a much stronger position to compete for points in the Sprint Race. We started the Race well, made some positions at the start but, after that, we could not go much further and points were out of reach. We certainly have many things to review and some learnings to take forward for tomorrow. We are in a good position for the race, it will be a long one, and we will do our best to come away with a good result.

I’m happy with my lap in SQ2 today. With the position we’re in, Q3 is a big achievement for us, and when we get so close, it’s a big tease. I’m really happy with the progress I made from SQ1 to SQ2, given we can’t really change the car from yesterday. We did some homework and played around with some things, which allowed me to push more confidently. It was good to be able to race today and again tomorrow, I really enjoyed being back competing, it’s a nice feeling. As for my driving, there were things I was happy about from the race and others I wasn’t so happy with, which are things I know I can improve on for tomorrow. With the temperatures and the way the tyres are, the grip feels low, and especially with the mix between old and new asphalt at different corners, it affects how the car behaves. However, it was encouraging that we had some pace at the end, so let's see how it goes tomorrow.

We were uncompetitive today in the Sprint and we haven’t been able to optimise our package all weekend. We need to keep looking at what we can learn from this weekend and try to score some points tomorrow. The whole Campus has worked flat out to bring the upgrade here to Austin, but the biggest problem so far this weekend was the challenging FP1 session where we had such limited time and laps to test the upgraded car out.

I wasn’t able to do a second push lap in SQ1 because the chequered flag came just before I crossed the line. It's frustrating because the opportunity to get to SQ2 was lost. Our car felt good, and the potential was there, so it’s a shame. The pace in today’s Sprint race was good, I overtook some cars and enjoyed it out there. Most importantly, we learned a lot about our long-run pace and have a lot of information to prepare for tomorrow, so tonight will be about fine-tuning our package. We’re starting towards the top ten for the race, and if we continue this pace into tomorrow, points are possible.

It feels like the first real running with the car to be honest because in practice there’s so many things going on. Then, there were just two qualifying sessions which were also short, just two runs each time, or less. It’s good to get some proper mileage with it, some long-run data and some feel for it. Obviously, it doesn’t look too good right now, but there’s more for us to analyze and understand, and more to discover with this package. At a Sprint weekend it’s difficult to explore that and unlock it.

As a positive to take from today, we gathered a good amount of data about how the medium compound performed, information that will help us ahead of tomorrow. I think our main issue today has been the Shootout earlier this morning, where we haven’t been able to get a single clean lap; I already felt more competitive during the Sprint and managed to put up some battles with the cars around me, eventually gaining a couple of places. I felt better in the long run and felt our pace had improved as well. Tomorrow, we will be starting from more favourable positions: I am confident that, if we do our homework right, we will have an actual chance to gain places and get back into the top ten.

Although it was effectively a standalone day, today has been a tricky one; we generally lacked pace, and on top of that, I had an issue on the gear sync at the start, which immediately cost me some ground. Still, we had opted to use today’s race as a session to better learn and understand our performance ahead of tomorrow, and indeed we gathered useful data which we will analyse tonight. We seemed to struggle a bit compared to our main rivals in terms of race pace, and we’ll be looking into that as well in order to quickly bounce back. I am confident we can still fight for points tomorrow, we definitely had potential on Friday, and with better grid placements, we can hopefully build something useful in the race.

It wasn’t a great Sprint, the pace dropped off a lot, so we’ll investigate tonight and assess what we think. We can’t change anything for tomorrow, so it is what it is, and we’ll see what we can do. I got a decent start and a decent first lap, then stayed there for a few laps before the well-known cycle of getting overtaken and the tires dropping off started.

It was always going to be difficult starting where we did. We’re still quite disconnected from high to low speed and that’s been a bit of a challenge. I struggled to be quick in the place I needed to be quick to have the chance for an overtake. I’m still in search for a bit more pace. The main takeaway is getting a taste of what the car is going to be like on a long run and which direction we need to try to move in. We’ll see what we can take from today and try to get in a better position for tomorrow.

It was a good start to the race; I made up a couple of places during the opening laps and I was happy with my overtake on Daniel [Ricciardo]. After that my tyres were beginning to fall away and I began losing the feeling with the brakes, so we had to retire and investigate. We’ll regroup tonight – with the benefit of having had some more running – and prepare to go again tomorrow.