Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

Another pole, which is amazing. To have a first and second in Qualifying is a little bit of a surprise when the field has been as tight as it has all weekend. The team has done an amazing job. It would be great to replicate this tomorrow, but it’s been very, very close on track. There are a lot of very quick drivers behind in quick cars, so I’m not expecting an easy race. There’s also plenty of question marks over the tyre degradation on the new tarmac – so lots of unknowns for us but plenty of excitement for the fans.

The first lap in Q3 was quite good, but the second was not quite there. However, it was still a good performance and a really good team effort. The field’s been incredibly tight this weekend, there was no guarantee of a front-row lock-out for us, so it’s an amazing effort to be able to pull that off. After the resurfacing, it’s been a little bit different to what we’re used to in Monza, and with such a tight field at the front, I think tomorrow’s race will be very exciting.

P3 was a good result today. It was very tight out there between several teams so starting on the second row is not a bad place to be. It took me a little bit of time to get the most out of the car; we looked at how to get the best out of the tyres and I saved my two best laps for last. To be just one tenth off pole position is a little frustrating but overall, we can be happy with our Saturday.

The McLarens are very quick at the moment. It is super impressive. Hopefully we can challenge them into the first corner and get ahead. If we can’t, I think it will be difficult to race them tomorrow. It is very hot out there though and the tyres are suffering. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on the Grand Prix.

Qualifying was tricky. We had some understeer, which is something I already felt in the practice sessions yesterday, so I struggled in some corners, especially in the first sector. That’s where we lost the most lap time and what ultimately may have cost us a chance to fight for pole. P4 was the best we could do today, but that’s not the kind of position we want to fight for, so we are going to work on finding what we are missing ahead of tomorrow’s race.
I expect this to be a tyre management race, so whoever does the best job there should come out on top. I will give it everything and I hope that we can bring home a victory for our tifosi.

We knew it was going to be close. Pole was a tenth away and that’s obviously frustrating. Looking at the data afterwards you always think you could have done better here or there, but the track temperature dropped a bit in Q3 and because of this maybe we picked up some extra understeer that didn’t help.
However, I feel like we pretty much extracted the maximum today and I remain confident for tomorrow. With a solid race execution we should target gaining positions and offer our tifosi a good show. I’m really looking forward to it.

I am very disappointed with how today went. I think we could have been on the front-row, maybe even pole position. Unfortunately, I just didn’t do the job today. I lost one tenth and-a-half through turns one and two, and then one more tenth in the final corner. There is nobody else to blame but myself. Qualifying has been a weakness of mine recently, but I’ll keep trying to figure it out.

We have a good race car. That should give us confidence for tomorrow. The team has done an amazing job to get the W15 into a much better window than it was in Zandvoort. The car has been feeling so much better

It was a bit of a mixed Qualifying session, Q1 and Q2 actually felt pretty good and we set some more competitive lap times during those sessions. In Q3, we struggled with balance and I picked up a lot of understeer compared to the runs before so couldn’t attack the corners properly. This hasn’t happened before so I don’t understand at the moment, we will need to dig in to that and really analyse ahead of tomorrow. Our biggest challenge was finding a stable balance from rear to front, we’ve been working hard and chasing this all weekend. Tomorrow is going to be tricky for everyone, we of course hope it will be more positive than today and we can make some moves, but it is a bit of an unknown at the moment.

I think this track exploits more of our issues, I think we have a disconnection with the balance and at this downforce level it is even harder. I had a great run on my scrub tyre in Q3 but then I put the new tyre on and everything gets really peaky and difficult - we need to understand why that is. I lost my final lap in Q3 and went off a little, I knew Max was behind me so I tried to give him a bit of a tow but it didn’t make much impact. It is a really poor performance, something I am really disappointed with, as the whole Team is. Everything is a little too sensible with the car at the moment and that is the main issue we are currently facing. Generally speaking, we are struggling a little too much with the balance and how on the edge things are, the car is tricky to play around with. But tomorrow is what matters and we have to keep the motivation high across the whole Team because we need to have a strong race. I believe that is where our strength will lie, the long run pace looks positive so let’s look to minimise the damage with both cars and score some good points.

P9 is great, so I’m very happy. We were the best of the rest so far this weekend and that’s where we hoped to be, but I don’t think we truly believed we’d be here, so it’s good. When the car continues to deliver in the practice sessions, it does add a bit of extra pressure to make sure we deliver in Qualifying, but it all paid off. It’s a very different track to Zandvoort and as good as the upgrades have been, we know this track does suit our car, but we also know that if we didn’t have the upgrade, we wouldn’t be in Q3, so that’s a nice takeaway. We were fighting the Haas throughout Qualifying and they seem to have slightly stronger race pace for tomorrow. Graining will be our biggest concern, but let’s see how we go.

I think it’s a solid job to be inside the top 10. To be behind Alex (Albon) by such a small margin isn’t ideal; I lost it already into Turn 1 and 2, and on the new tire somehow I didn’t make them stick, every time on new tires it didn’t go well, so that’s something to understand. All in all, I’m happy, the car has felt pretty decent on the low downforce package, I have a good feeling and confidence and hopefully, we can take that into tomorrow. I think we’re in the mix, but I expect us all to be very tight.

We were heading into Qualifying feeling a little pessimistic, so all in all we have to be happy with P11. The car is struggling a bit here so to be so close to Q3 is a good sign. We are going into the unknown tomorrow and it won't be easy, but a top ten finish is still the target.

I’m quite happy with the lap today, I didn’t feel like we left much on the table. I knew after this morning it’d be tricky to get into Q3, so to get quite close to it in the end was good. Ultimately, I’m pleased with the lap and felt like we did all we could. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough, but the field is really close. There’s a whole mix of cars from P8 to P20 realistically, and the fight for points will be on tomorrow. No one’s used the Hard yet so that’s unknown for the race. We’re close enough and if you do have pace, you can overtake here. I’m looking forward to making up places tomorrow.

The nightmare continues in qualifying. In Q1, the Williams went off in front of me and there was so much dust I didn’t know if he was off the track or on – I couldn’t see anything – so that lap was ruined. It’s very important to get a slipstream here, it can give you three tenths, and I went out behind the two Alpine but they did a prep lap, so I ended up without a tow, completely on my own. That margin is what I’m missing for Q3 but P13 isn’t too far away from the top 10 and we can do something from there.

It was great to reach Q2 in Qualifying today, as it has been very difficult for us this weekend especially on the softer compound tyre. Every time we fitted the Soft tyres this week, we haven’t been able to make it work the way we wanted to. The front and rear tyre, the whole grip on the car hasn’t felt right. The best lap was with used tyres in Q1. In Q2, we tried many different things to get on top of it but somehow the grip hasn’t been there today. That said, we are not far from getting up into the points and look forward to race day tomorrow where we will fight our way up the grid to get up to the top-10.

Some positives to take from today, we have made some changes overnight that seemed to have done the trick. The car felt better since yesterday and more like our performance pre-Zandvoort. We have not fully understood why, so need to investigate this further. It was always going to be a challenging weekend for us at Monza, but I think the hard work the team has put in overnight paid off and we have made a step in the right direction. Although, we have not put in a fully clean lap so left a bit of performance on the table and maybe even could have moved a few positions up further. Now we need to work on our strategy for tomorrow, to make sure we get it right. It will be interesting to see what will happen as the teams don’t have too much representative data on the long runs yet and with the new tarmac there will be some unknowns. We will see how tomorrow goes and we will make sure we put ourselves in a position to fight and hopefully be able to gain positions.

It was tough today. Yesterday we started pretty far off the pace, and then session by session we managed to close the gap towards the midfield, but unfortunately, it’s clearly not enough. I’m frustrated, there are some things unclear, so we need to understand what’s going on, as throughout the weekend we don’t have an easy car to drive. I’m pretty happy with the lap I did in qualifying, but I think we’re still missing something, as generally this weekend I’m feeling a lack of pace. There are differences across the cars, so surely there are a lot of things to learn. I’ll do my best tomorrow.

I think we had the potential to get through to Q2 today, so it's frustrating to miss out by such small margins. I was up a couple of tenths on my final lap but the call for the yellow flag came and so I had to back out [of the lap]. It's been tricky all weekend and we haven't quite found the pace we need, but we'll see how we go in the race tomorrow. It's a tight pack here, so we'll need luck on our side.

It was special to do my first Qualifying session in F1. I’ve enjoyed every moment of the weekend so far. Unfortunately, I made a little mistake on my second push which cost me the chance to do a good second lap. It was looking promising as I was in a good place after my first lap and, of course, working towards making a step on the second push. The car was very competitive, and I think it was possible to go through to Q2 today. However, this is just the start and there are things I still need to work on with only having a few laps in an F1 car. I’m a bit frustrated right now but I know there is a lot of potential, and the team has been working hard to make the car suit me a bit better. Tomorrow will provide a great opportunity to learn more about the car and tyres as well as managing a full race distance in F1. Let’s see how it goes.

It feels there was something more we could have achieved today, so I'm disappointed to be in P19: the first push lap I did was quite decent, and with the track improvement, I had every possibility to make it into Q2, only for the yellow flag towards the end of Q1 to take away that chance from us. The third practice session was more difficult than yesterday, so we opted to revert to the Friday settings for qualifying. The feeling was much better but, in the end, it was all down to luck and, unfortunately, the last run got halted by a yellow flag, so I couldn’t improve much. A question mark remains on where we could have ended up, as overall it seems like we are in a slightly better position than last weekend. Looking at tomorrow, tyre management will be crucial – hopefully, there’ll be some opportunities to catch our rivals and try and improve our positions on track.

Today’s qualifying session was quite frustrating, as we know we could have got something more than we did. My final lap began promisingly, with an improvement over my previous runs – until cars in front of me started going off the track, forcing me to lift off and compromising my lap. As a result, I couldn’t set the lap time I was on pace for. I’m confident that, without these incidents, I would have achieved a higher starting position and would have been much closer to Q2. Despite the tough qualifying, the car definitely felt better than it did this morning: we’ll use this improved feeling to try and move forward in the race and learn as much as we can.