Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

“I think we have a good base and the car is working”, Seb commented. “We have improved in our work on the car. In the beginning it’s always a bit difficult, but now everything is getting better. So, it was nice to keep the car alive. I felt quite good from the start and made some progress during the session. I am very happy with the last laps I did, and also obviously with the result I got. I was really glad to see how the car was responding today. We worked on the setup and tried different things. In Australia the track is tricky and bumpy, so it was difficult to change too much and draw any conclusions. But after the race and with the mileage we did, I think we understood the car better. It’s nice to see that we have built a very strong car and that today we are able to put it on the front row, beating everybody else. It’s been a great result that the whole team deserves. However, the ‘big day’ is tomorrow”.

“My last run was far from perfect; there was traffic and we couldn’t improve. We did not give ourselves a proper chance to do the best we could. The car had a lot of speed, but we did not take full advantage of that. I’m sure there was a lot more to come. Anyway, we start the race in a good position, so I’m a bit disappointed today but that’s how it goes.. Tomorrow is another day and we should have a good car; we hope for a better result. The key point will be tire management; it will be tricky for everybody. We’ll try to make the best of it, and I’ll go as fast as I can”.

Es ist enttäuschend, nicht in der ersten Reihe zu stehen. Wir haben im Verlauf des Wochenendes gute Fortschritte erzielt, aber Ferrari war heute schneller. Auf diesem Streckentyp und bei diesen Bedingungen liegt eindeutig noch Arbeit vor uns. Ich glaube, dass wir das richtige Setup für das Rennen haben, aber die Rennpace lässt sich nur schwer vorhersagen. Ich denke, dass es sehr eng zwischen Ferrari, Red Bull und uns zugehen wird. Demnach sollte es ein interessantes Rennen werden. Ich habe im vergangenen Jahr auf dieser Strecke viel über den Umgang mit den Reifen gelernt, das ich jetzt umsetzen kann. Wir werden morgen alles geben und hoffentlich kann auch Lewis sich zurückkämpfen und eine gute Punkteausbeute einfahren, um Ferrari unter Druck zu setzen.

“That was really close. Part of me is disappointed that we are so close but still at the tail of the lead pack in Qualifying, but I don’t think I could really have done much better. Lewis was still a couple of tenths ahead of me. There was maybe a tenth left on the table but I think the Mercedes still had some extra pace. It’s almost frustrating to be so close but actually it’s encouraging that the top five cars are within about four tenths. I’m always excited for the race. Practice and Qualifying are ok but Sunday is my favourite day of the week. Yesterday our race pace didn’t look bad but I think our car in FP2 wasn’t as good as it is now, so it’s encouraging to know that our car should be even better tomorrow and hopefully it puts us in the fight. We will start in fourth place now with Lewis’s penalty so I think it is going to be exciting. Hopefully, in 24 hours we can do a pretty cool interview after a good race. I’m also pleased for Pierre, Toro Rosso and Honda today. Not taking anything away from Pierre, but in my first year at Toro Rosso I also qualified sixth here and he has done the same. I can see him doing the interviews and he is super excited, so it’s good for the team and I’m happy for him.”

"My best qualifying in Formula 1! It's been an amazing day...the team has been working very hard since the beginning of the weekend and it's good to see this effort repaid. I felt really good in the car so I'm very happy. Since the first lap in FP1 I felt we were pretty fast, but we knew we had to put everything together to get into Q3 and we made it! It's pretty mega! Hopefully I can get the best start possible tomorrow - we saw in FP2 that our long run pace was good so let's see! Of course we expect the front runners like Hamilton and Verstappen to come back quickly, but I think we will be in the fight with Renault and Haas hopefully, so we need to work really hard tonight and make sure we have a car as fast as today and aim to score good points in the race."

“It went well and I’m very happy with today. The tires here have been really difficult to switch on. You either don’t switch them on or you overheat them. It’s a very narrow window. To get that sorted for qualifying and find a good rhythm all the way through the session consistently – it felt good. I’m happy. It’s a little bit annoying to see one car ahead by one-, two-hundredths of a second. You could always find a little more, but then so could they. I think we got everything out of it today. Our race pace still isn’t a given, but it’s looking good. It wasn’t bad on Friday, so we’re positive, but we’re also aware those tires are pretty tricky, so we need to get them in the window, then we’ll be fine.”

“I would prefer to be fifth, but in Q3 things seemed to slip from our hands a little. My Q2 lap was wonderful, it was as good as it was going to get, but in Q3 it didn’t feel quite there. I couldn’t repeat the lap time otherwise we’d be in fifth. I think we’ll start seventh and we have every chance for a good result from there tomorrow. Our race-pace was similar to our rivals, but our target is to beat them.”

“I’m feeling pretty pleased with our performance tonight. We are back in Q3 after a huge effort by the team over the last two weeks. We did a huge amount of work yesterday – testing, learning and understanding things on the car – and we can already see the improvement compared to Melbourne. It’s a good sign for the future and it shows the strength of this team even when we are under pressure. The car felt strong tonight and I think we are in good shape for tomorrow. Points are the target and we have good straight-line speed and decent race pace.”

Heute war nicht gerade der beste Tag und morgen erwartet uns eines der härtesten Rennen seit einiger Zeit. Wir haben versucht, vor die Ferrari zu gelangen, aber es war hart. Sie hatten das gesamte Wochenende über die Pace. Ich bin nicht unbedingt meine beste Runde gefahren und Ferrari hatte wie so oft bei diesen wärmeren Temperaturen die Oberhand. Für morgen lautet das Ziel, den Schaden zu begrenzen. Ich habe die weichen Reifen, also sollte ich länger fahren können. Das wird morgen interessant, zu beobachten, da es einige verschiedene Strategien gibt. Ich werde versuchen, alles aus dem Auto herauszuquetschen. Ich weiß nicht, was wir morgen erreichen können, aber ich werde mein Bestes geben und hoffe, dass ich noch etwas erreichen kann.

“I’ve been chasing car balance the whole weekend and I wasn’t fully comfortable with the car during qualifying, finding it difficult to put a perfect lap together tonight. However, I’ve been happier with the long runs and there are a lot more possibilities during the race, especially with the tyre degradation that we’ve seen at the moment. That opens up a lot more windows so we’ll be ready for it. I’m convinced we can move up the grid tomorrow and have a good one.”

"There's a bit of déjà vu from Melbourne, I just missed out on Q2 there, and in Bahrain I just missed out on Q3! We've definitely taken a step in the right direction as yesterday we were really on the back foot from our side of the garage. The team brought an update here which was actually worth a large amount of time. It's an amazing job from Toro Rosso to bring so much performance from the aero side to the track. I only got the new package for the first time today so I was a bit behind the eight ball but, at the end, I was very close to Q3 that I have to be happy anyway - I think everyone's done a great job. Unfortunately, I used three sets of tyres in the first part of qualifying – with hitting the bird and breaking my front wing. I don't know how the bird is, but my front wing was destroyed! It was really close today...it's a shame I made a small mistake on the last corner!"

“I am happy with what we achieved today. We made some good progress and we turned out to be closer to the front of the midfield than I thought we would be. I missed out on making Q3 by a very small margin, but it’s not too bad to be starting from P12. Grid position is not as important here as in other places so there is still plenty to fight for tomorrow. I think we can score some points and it’s definitely a big opportunity for us. It’s going to be a long race and I think tyre management will be very important so hopefully that will play to our advantage.”

“Today wasn’t great – our qualifying performance was worse than we expected. It was okay in free practice, but then in qualifying we lost speed and we were struggling from Q1. “Our one-lap performance is not yet optimised – we cannot extract the maximum from the tyres over one lap, and we need to find the reasons why. “Our race pace has been better than our pace over a single lap so far, and yesterday during the long runs on old tyres we felt quite competitive. This morning, too, on a hot track the car felt good and we seem to take good care of the rear tyres, which is going to be an advantage in the race. But, obviously our starting position is compromised already and we are quite far back, so we’ll see what we can do. “Having said that, not making it into Q3 isn’t the end of the world. We didn’t make it there in Australia either, but on Sunday we both scored points, so hopefully we can repeat that here. This is a demanding circuit, tyre degradation is high and reliability is a concern, so we need to stay focussed and take advantage of the strategy. The free choice of tyres now gives us some advantage and we’ll try to maximise that. The race is tomorrow and that’s when the points are given.”

“We all expected a bit more from today. We had good sessions yesterday in FP1 and FP2 and I was feeling very confident in the car. We know we’re in this very compact midfield where every tenth is very important for us and makes all the difference, so we need to keep improving. “With a step forward today we could have fought for Q3, but we knew it was going to be tough. In these harsh conditions things can change quickly and it’s really unfortunate we couldn’t get there. “We didn’t make the step forward that we needed to today, so we need to keep pushing and there’s a lot of work to do. But, I think we can race tomorrow. We had good pace during the long runs on Friday and the balance was pretty good. This is a circuit where strategy and tyres are quite complex, so there are some possibilities. We need to be opportunistic and, like in Melbourne, try to benefit from other people’s mistakes. “We have a free choice of tyres tomorrow, and I think around here it could be quite interesting. Tyre degradation has been key at this track in the past and there are a number of different strategies possible. We’ve seen some good races here and that’s what we’re going after tomorrow.”

“I was very surprised at what happened in Q1 so I wanted to try and understand the cause before commenting on it. What we can see in the data is a sudden power increase, just like an on/off switch. It looks like roughly 150 Horse Power was suddenly switched on during the corner which of course is not easy to anticipate, this caught me out and meant I lost the rear and spun. The damage to the car was just the front left corner so we don’t have any major concerns for tomorrow. I was disappointed to crash not just because it ruined Qualifying but also as the car is looking very quick here so has made the job tomorrow hard. At least at this track you can overtake. My race pace looks good so if I can have a clean first stint and get past a lot of cars it could still be an exciting race. You always need a bit of luck so a safety car to bunch up the field would help and make the race open again. We have a quick car so that is always good, let’s see what I can do tomorrow.”

“I don’t really know what happened. We had a very difficult out lap with a lot of traffic and just no grip. There’s not much to say except that I had very little grip and couldn’t do any better. We need to understand that, but I’m disappointed. We made a lot of changes last night, so I’m hoping that will pay off for our race pace tomorrow.”

„Wir haben uns heute dazu entschieden, uns während des FP3 auf Rennvorbereitungen zu konzentrieren. Wir hatten eine wirklich gute Trainingseinheit und konnten mit unseren direkten Konkurrenten mithalten. Das Qualifying lief ebenso gut – wir waren im Mittelfeld. Leider konnten wir am Ende von Q1 den letzten notwendigen Schritt nicht tätigen, den unsere Konkurrenten gemacht haben. Es war etwas enttäuschend, bereits im Q1 auszuscheiden, weil es kurzzeitig danach aussah, als ob wir es ins Q2 schaffen könnten. Im Allgemeinen ist es jedoch ein gutes Gefühl zu sehen, dass wir Fortschritte erzielen. Wir haben viel an den Rennvorbereitungen gearbeitet, und ich erwarte, dass wir morgen im Mittelfeld kämpfen werden. Mal sehen, was möglich sein wird.“

I think we could have hoped for a bit more. The first lap I did was a really good lap. I don’t think we could squeeze out any more from there. The second lap with the second set of tyres was strongly affected by a very messy outlap where I was fighting three or four cars for position. It was really messy preparation, I started the lap just behind a Sauber, and even then I knew the tyres and the brakes were not there. I almost managed to beat my previous lap-time, which shows we could potentially go another three or four tenths quicker, but I don’t know if that would have moved us any further ahead. I think, compared to Melbourne, we actually did a better job, in some terms we maximised the performance of the car. We are moving ahead in one area, but we are missing something. I’m happy because we’re moving ahead and we are not making the same mistakes as we were in Melbourne. We didn’t see it in the results, but for sure the way we are working is better and personally I’m happy with that.

„Der Freitag war ein recht guter Tag für uns, heute war es etwas schwieriger. Die Balance des Autos war nicht ideal. Allerdings weiss ich auch, dass ich noch daran arbeiten muss, mich an diese Art von Autos zu gewöhnen. Insbesondere muss ich mit dem Untersteuern zurechtkommen, womit ich derzeit noch etwas zu kämpfen habe. Das Resultat war etwas frustrierend, aber ich werde sicherlich davon lernen, und mein Bestes tun, um während des Rennes eine gute Leistung zu zeigen. Die gestrigen Rundenzeiten waren positiv. Es wird wichtig sein, einen guten Start zu haben und dabei hoffentlich einige Positionen gewinnen zu können.“

It has been a really hard weekend. It was disappointing for the team with both cars out in Q1 and it was not ideal. A lot of things are wrong. The balance isn't there, the grip is not high enough and we need more speed, so we need everything to go quicker. Last year in qualifying, my lap was four tenths better than it was today. In the race, I hope we can go forward, but we don't have the package today to compete where we want to compete.