Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

China scheint ein gutes Pflaster für mich zu bleiben. Die Strecke liegt wohl meinem Stil mehr als andere. Ich fahre wirklich gerne hier. Man muss sich nur einmal die ganzen Plakate auf den Tribünen ansehen, um zu erkennen, wie unglaublich die Unterstützung hier in jedem Jahr ist. Das Auto fühlte sich heute richtig gut an. Die Jungs in den Werken haben seit Malaysia fantastisch gearbeitet. Sie haben genau analysiert, wo wir uns verbessern und Fortschritte erzielen konnten. Das letzte Rennen war nicht das sauberste, aber an diesem Wochenende haben wir bislang alles ohne Probleme zusammenbekommen. Dafür möchte ich allen danken. Hoffentlich geht es morgen so weiter. Es liegt noch ein langes Rennen vor uns und die Ferraris sind hier erneut sehr schnell. Unser Job ist noch nicht erledigt.

Ich bin vom heutigen Ergebnis enttäuscht. Vier Hundertstel sind nichts. Ich fuhr am Ende eine gute Runde, aber rückblickend ist es immer einfach, zu sagen, wo man dieses kleine Bisschen hätte finden können. Jetzt muss ich damit leben. Ich bin immer noch zuversichtlich für morgen. Beim Setup habe ich mich auf die Rennpace konzentriert und ich weiß, dass die Reifen morgen ein entscheidender Faktor sein werden. Jetzt werde ich versuchen, viel Druck auf Lewis vor mir auszuüben.

All in all it was a good session for us. We had only one real run in Q3 and were able to nail this run and put the car on P3. It is a shame that we couldn’t put both cars side by side. As far as I was told, Kimi had some issues with traffic on the warm up lap and with these temperatures everybody is relaying on the out lap, to nail it on the flying one. The pace is there and I am very happy with this. We have to keep our feet on the ground, Mercedes is very quick, and for a reason, they have a great car and both drivers seem to do a good job. So this makes them difficult to beat. For us, though, I am happy where we are and I hope we can be a bit closer tomorrow. We also have to watch out for others. Never underestimate Williams, also Red Bull seems to be better this weekend: it will be a long race.

I am really happy with my lap. I managed to get the best out of the car and showed we are still in the fight with Ferrari. The car has improved throughout the weekend and we had the set-up correct for qualifying. Tomorrow is when it really counts so I hope we can have a strong race and get the most points on offer from the car.

It was quite a close qualifying, although I suffered with the rear of the car throughout the final session, which made it a bit harder. We know we need to work on our race pace, but we should be closer than we were in the first two races. The cars in front look strong so we have to concentrate on tyre degradation.

I’m disappointed with the result, my car was behaving pretty well most of the time but in in my last run I was not able to put a good lap together. For some reason the handling of the car was different, more loose than in the previous laps and slippery on the rear especially in the first three corners. It’s a shame because in the previous sessions I had been satisfied with the behaviour. My starting position for the race tomorrow it’s not ideal , but I expect to have the same good car we’ve had so far. We’ll try to do our best and I’m sure that with a good start we can extract the best result out of the situation.

P7 is what we expected for today. I think we are always trying to find a compromise, us and drivers and the engineers, and they have done the best job they can with the settings we are running. With quali we seem to find more pace as the session goes on and that's important. Driveability has improved and our long-run pace is better, I think we should be closer to Williams tomorrow and I am optimistic we can have a good fight for top five.

It was a very tight qualifying session which made it very exciting in the car and I’m sure exciting to watch too. We made some good changes from yesterday which gave me a nice balance and I think that was about the best possible from the car at the moment. It’s going to be a long race and I think the key will be to take care of your front left tyres. I’m enjoying driving the E23 and I think we’ve found a strong baseline set-up which is important for me.

Es war ein toller Tag für das Team, da wir in der Lage waren, beide Autos ins Q3 zu bringen. Es ist auch erfreulich, dass unsere Rundenzeiten hier in Shanghai wieder konkurrenzfähig sind. Ich bin zuversichtlich, was das morgige Rennen betrifft. Ich hoffe, wir können wieder in die Punkte fahren. Dafür werde ich kämpfen.

Beide Autos haben es ins Q3 geschafft – das ist eine grossartige Leistung des gesamten Teams. Schon während des Wochenendes waren die Rundenzeiten sehr eng beisammen. Felipe und ich haben heute gute Arbeit geleistet und beide Autos in eine vielversprechende Ausgangslage gebracht. Es wird ein spannendes Rennen, und ich denke, dass wir gute Chancen auf einen positiven Tag haben.

I expect to fight in Q3 but it’s been harder for me so far this weekend than it has in the previous two races. For whatever reason we’ve struggled through the weekend to find the right balance from the car which means I can’t be fully confident to push on this type of track.

I was losing some power today and the team is investigating the reason for this. I am disappointed but we have to keep our heads up. We are working hard to keep moving forward, at this track we have a straight-line speed disadvantage and we are trying to find a solution for that.

I'm happy with how the car has improved compared to yesterday. In FP3 we looked stronger and even though this is a very tricky track, I kept working to find the right balance and finally I found it just in time for the Qualifying session. Of course, my 13th position doesn't show exactly where we should have been, as I think Q3 was possible for me today, but a lock-up at Turn 6 prevented me from it. We now have a bit more work to do for tomorrow, but I think we can be strong. We have a good race pace so I'm confident we will be able to fight for points again.

This morning in FP3 we made a step forward in terms of performance and the car felt better, but when we went into Qualy this afternoon we didn't manage to find that extra bit. By missing out on two or three tenths we didn't get into Q3 and we're not in the best position for tomorrow. However, we know that we have a decent pace on long runs and we showed some good consistency yesterday, so to finish in the top ten is still our main target.

I had a couple of pretty good, clean laps in Q1 and that was enough to take me through to Q2. I think we got the maximum from the first session and that’s why we approached Q2 with the race in mind because having enough sets of new tyres will make an important difference on Sunday. I’m looking forward to the race and seeing what we can do. We need to look at the strategy options tonight to make sure we pick the right one. If we can make a good start and find a nice rhythm tomorrow, we can certainly look at challenging for points.

It was disappointing to go out in Q1 but unfortunately the final lap just was not quick enough. I lost a bit of lap time with a small mistake as I was pushing hard, trying to get everything out of the car and that caused us to miss out. We know there is a lot of work ahead of us to develop this car and get its performance to the level we expect from it, but we know this is a process that takes time: it is just a matter of pushing hard to get better week after week. Looking ahead to tomorrow, we are aiming to be fighting for some points. It is not going to be an easy task but we will give it our best shot.

“I guess we hoped we might be just a bit closer than we were today; in practice, we’d looked a bit more competitive, certainly. “We’d found a reasonably good balance with the car, in fact, but the lap-time isn’t quite there yet. In addition, the cars in front of us seemed to make a big leap forward this afternoon – whereas we didn’t – so we’ll need to find out why that was. “So, overall, we’ve made some improvements this weekend, but qualifying just didn't go our way. Hopefully, things will be better tomorrow, and we’ll be able to race some of the cars that will start in front of us on the grid.”

“We were two tenths away from the mid-pack – and close to getting into Q2 – today. We’re getting there, and this is another step forward, but we’re still under-performing, so we need to keep improving. “Our main priority now is to finish tomorrow’s race; that’ll allow us to learn more about the car and uncover any possible problems. Obviously, two DNFs in Malaysia wasn’t an ideal situation for us, so, regardless of the result, we need to make the finish here in China. “This has been another positive weekend – everyone in the team is excited about the progress we’re making.”

It’s always good to feel progress being made and we’ve been making big strides from session to session here. There’s still a long way to go but the progress over the past three weekends is clear for everyone to see. The trouble-free practice sessions have really helped us to find a rhythm that has enabled us to make the right set-up changes. The car felt good and I was pretty happy with my lap, so we go into tomorrow in a comfortable position. I’m eager for my first race distance in the car and plenty more data to help the team develop, so fingers crossed we can have a good race.

I’m a little disappointed today but a good result for the team. This morning I experienced an electronics problem a couple of times, which lost us a little momentum and also I missed my option tyre run in FP3. Overall I think we have seen a good improvement during the weekend though, so I think we will be better in the race tomorrow.