Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

I enjoyed the day a lot. The car was really nice to drive and it was a good improvement from yesterday. We improved the car a little bit overnight and came out with a great set up which allowed me to attack the high speed corners and improve the one lap performance. Around this track, it really depends on your confidence level and how much you can go to your limit and today I felt very comfortable with the car. The whole of qualifying has been going very well, especially Q2 and my first lap in Q3. I am proud of today and am looking forward to the race tomorrow. As a Team we are happy with our car and the race pace and we really found our stride today. It has been a great job from the whole Team.

I’m not fully satisfied with qualifying today and we will work on understanding the feeling I had during the sessions to be able to get all the potential out of the car in the future. I wish Carlos all the best for a speedy recovery and congratulations to Ollie, who is extremely talented and he showed it today on his first Formula 1 qualifying. He's done a lot of sim work which makes me happy to see that the prep he did back at the factory paid off as he was well prepared and extremely impressive today. I think between the two of us, we can bring home plenty of points tomorrow.

It would have been nice to have locked out the front row but I think we are in a good position to fight tomorrow. I felt like we took a back from practice, we had a positive Thursday but qualifying was not the same case unfortunately. The whole day hasn’t been as good as yesterday, I didn’t get the best out of the tyre preparation, in combination with the balance. So, we have to understand and review why that was but what we did to the car should hopefully mean we are stronger in the race. It’s important to get past Charles as soon as possible and be in the mix, especially with the DRS zones I think it is going to be important to make progress early. I believe we have stronger race pace than Ferrari but degradation can kick in and change things very quickly. It is always a challenge here but you can overtake and race and there is a long way ahead of us.

It’s a nice surprise again to have a strong Qualifying in Jeddah. We are very competitive in one lap and our car is responding very well in Qualifying. I enjoyed every lap out there tonight. On my final push lap in Q3 I managed to take a tow from Lewis [Hamilton] onto the main straight but maybe I lost a tenth of a second into Turn 1, so in the end it balanced out over the lap. It’s a good result for Aston Martin but the real test is tomorrow. We have our feet on the ground and we will see where we are with our race pace.

P5. I think that was probably the most we could have got out of it, but it was a decent session and the car felt pretty good. All-in-all, we can be pretty happy with that. We definitely still have some things to improve with the car but I think that was a pretty solid session, minus a little tap of the wall in Q1. Going into tomorrow, I think we’re in a good position and hopefully we can move forward. Congratulations to Ollie Bearman on his efforts today as well, it was impressive to see him in Q2 having only hopped in the car this morning.

A good day. I don’t think we could have asked for much more as a team, so I’m happy. I think we got the most out of the car. We went 4-2-1 with the tyres, which put us at a disadvantage in qualifying with one fewer set of tyres. That made our life a little bit trickier today, but we knew that, we knew what to expect, and we hope it will pay us back tomorrow. I’m very happy and I think we maximised today. Well done to Ollie Bearman, that's a really impressive result given he didn't know he'd be driving an F1 car today, he definitely seems to like this circuit. Best wishes to Carlos too, hopefully he'll have a speedy recovery.

Leider konnte ich meine letzte Runde auf den neuen Reifen nicht beenden. Ich habe einen Fehler gemacht, das ist meine Schuld, und damit war es gelaufen. Meine schnellste Runde war daher auf den gebrauchten Reifen. Es war eine starke Runde, aber wenn ich meine letzte Runde zu Ende hätte fahren können, hätten wir vielleicht um P4 oder sogar noch mehr kämpfen können. Es geht sehr eng zu, und wir haben letzte Woche gesehen, dass man mehrere Positionen verlieren kann, wenn man nicht alles richtig zusammenbekommt. Wir sind immer noch dabei, das Auto kennenzulernen. In Bahrain waren wir im Training auf P1 und P2 und gestern hier wieder auf P2. Heute sind wir zurückgefallen, aber es gibt Potenzial. Es ist eine lange Saison, also werden wir versuchen, die Plattform, die wir haben, besser zu verstehen und konstantere Leistungen abzurufen. Ich bin zuversichtlich, dass wir für morgen eine gute Rennpace haben. Wir sehen auf der Geraden schnell aus, was ein Bonus ist. Es ist hier allerdings schwierig, einem anderen Auto zu folgen, und angesichts des Reifenabbaus sollte es ein lockeres Ein-Stopp-Rennen sein. Wir müssen einen guten Start hinlegen und sehen, was wir von dort aus erreichen können.

Das war heute ein sehr schwieriger Tag. Im FP3 war ich viel zufriedener, und das Auto fühlte sich viel besser an als am Donnerstag. Es war eine echte Verbesserung, und ich hatte viel mehr Vertrauen in das Auto. Leider fühlte es sich im Qualifying ähnlich an wie gestern, und das Auto gab mir nicht die Stabilität, die ich brauchte. Es war ein Kampf, und wir verloren die Zeit vor allem im schnellen ersten Sektor. Unsere Rennpace ist normalerweise besser als unsere Qualifying-Pace. Wir waren auch auf den Geraden schnell, und das hilft uns hoffentlich. Es wird schwierig werden, aber wir werden alles geben, um morgen vorwärtszukommen. Wenn uns das gelingen sollte, wäre das großartig.

We did it! I’m very happy today. The team did a fantastic job of giving me a nice car, and I enjoyed it, so a huge thanks to everyone. We were expecting it to be difficult, but I focused on myself to extract as much performance from the car as possible, and I’m pleased I was able to put it all together. It’s the first Q3 of the year and it’s given us extra confidence for the future. I enjoyed today a lot, but tomorrow won't be easy, so we now focus on the race. We have a lot of experienced people, and I’m confident we can maximise our package and score some points.

Q1 was very good – the car felt really positive. But then I think we might have had some issues in Q3 – we need to investigate it. The car felt a bit tricky and then I lost some time in the final sector – which is basically just straights – on my last Q3 lap. We need to look into why we weren’t able to go any quicker after Q1 – we were much better at the start of Qualifying than at the end. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow – it’s going to be a long race, with a lot of degradation, so there will definitely be some opportunities.

It’s been a great day but it could have been even better. It wasn’t the ideal way of making my F1 debut and of course I send all my best wishes to Carlos for a speedy recovery. But it’s a great opportunity nevertheless. I would have liked to have come to quali with more than the 22 laps I did in FP3. But I can still be happy with today, even if Q2 was a bit messy. It was so close, but I made a mistake on my first push lap, so I had to do a second one and by then the tyres were no longer at their best. Now I’m ready to make the most of this opportunity tomorrow. I will focus on bringing the car home, although points would be nice. But it’s my first race on a really difficult track, so I can’t expect too much.

I’m mostly happy with P12 but I know we’re still missing Q3 by a few tenths, so we’re a little further from where we want to be but it’s good progress. We have good race pace and I think we’ll be able to manage the tyres reasonably well tomorrow. Whilst we struggled a little bit today, our race pace looks to be slightly better than some of our competitors, so we’ll see what we can do with it tomorrow.

It went better than expected I would say. The cold temperatures didn’t seem to help us so we were having to do a preparation lap, instead of just an out lap, then push. It looks like we were more exposed with the cold temperatures, which is a different situation than we’re used to, normally it’s the other way around. P13 for tomorrow is a decent starting position, it’s close to the points and I think we can fight for them - it could’ve been much worse.

It was a very frustrating qualifying. Compared to Bahrain, where I was more frustrated with myself because I knew there was more time on the table, today was a little bit more of a mystery. I know where the time was, but I don’t know how we could’ve got it in that session. I was confident going into qualifying, and I was feeling quite good in the car, but on the second run, I made a mistake. Nonetheless, we were still in the fight. Once in Q2, everyone was improving their lap time, but I felt like I couldn’t get any more out of what I had, and we just plateaued. It wasn’t a matter of understeer or oversteer, but more that I didn’t have the grip compared to the others. Well done to Yuki, he did a great job! Thinking of tomorrow, I have a few areas in mind to analyse, so we’ll look into them and hopefully, we'll find more performance for the race.

The power cut, and on the radio the team said it was related to the fuel system – fuel not being delivered to the engine – which is obviously a problem and they asked me to stop. Yesterday was okay, not great, but we did some decent set-up work overnight, but we can’t really test that until tomorrow obviously. I think it will be challenging either way, especially from where we start with traffic and running with the pack. It’s going to be an interesting day for us to see how the package performs here on a very different circuit to Bahrain.

It is very disappointing to finish just a handful of hundredths away from Q2. It had actually been a decent session until the last push lap, when I got caught up in traffic in the last four corners, and ended up with not one, but two cars blocking the way in front of me. Based on the delta, I should have made it through, which makes it even more frustrating. We are still lacking something on single-lap performance, and today’s happenings didn’t work out in our favour. Nevertheless, tomorrow is a new day, with new opportunities to fight our way through the field. Based on the last event, our race pace should grant us better chances to improve our grid positions. Of course, the starting slots we are in are not ideal, so it’ll be important to keep away from trouble at the start and in Turn 1, and try everything we can to get some points.

It’s been a difficult Qualifying for us here in Jeddah, where we still lack some performance. I would say I maximised the session and unfortunately that was only enough for Q1. We will keep pushing, keep our heads high and keep digging to unlock more pace from the car. We will fight in the race – as we always do - and try to have a good start tomorrow. Our straight line speed has been reasonably competitive this weekend, so we will see how we can race relative to others. Gathering data and learning more about the car is also a must for us.

Unfortunately, we had a challenging Qualifying session in Jeddah. The first push lap in Q1 felt good, we maximised the lap, but the pace was just not there. On my second lap, I was lacking rear grip and the car was sliding quite a bit. We need to analyse why this happens and find solutions going forward. We knew it would not be an easy day but everyone is pushing to find improvements and we are doing our best to improve our current situation. Tomorrow is race day and we will fight and give everything we can, as we do each and every time we are in the car. I will try my best to go up the grid and, as a team, we will keep bettering our understanding of the package.

We’ve had the car in a good place all weekend and it was definitely capable of getting through to Q2. Our first lap of Qualifying was right where we needed to be, but a very compromised outlap on the second run meant we couldn’t get the tyre in the right window. It looks like tomorrow will be a high-pace race and our long runs look okay, so hopefully we can make up some places.

First and foremost, the team did a fantastic job putting the car back together in such a short time, which is definitely not an easy task. The accident in Turn Six was quite some impact: it’s a flat-out corner, and I lost the rear – which cost us the qualifying and a chance to show what we can do due to the time we needed to repair the car. Until then, the weekend, in general, had felt good, and I can feel the team has made a step forward. Unfortunately, we’ll start from the back at a track with not much tyre degradation, definitely not a position we wanted to be in. Nevertheless, I am happy that the team managed to get me out there to get a feel for the car ahead of the race. Tomorrow will be difficult, but our race pace has been looking decent so far, and we’ll stay positive.