Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

P1 feels really good today. That last lap in Q3 felt unbelievable. I could see I was gaining a few tenths corner after corner, and it just felt incredible. Without the yellow flag at the end of the session, I know we could have been even faster.

It was a tense Q1 and Q2 for us as it was very tight, but once we got into Q3 I just focused on driving instinctively and everything came together. I’ve felt confident in the car all weekend and I’m really pleased we were able to deliver when it mattered most.

Toto and the team have been hugely supportive. We’re in constant communication and that belief gives you the freedom to go out there and enjoy it, which is exactly what I did today.

Of course, today is only part of the job. Tomorrow is what counts and it’s going to be a close race. Ferrari and McLaren have looked strong, and Max is always going to be a factor. We’ll need to execute well, stay clean, and make the most of every opportunity.

The car felt good today and we worked hard last night to find the improvements we needed in order to increase our competitiveness on this track. On driving side, I wanted to deliver a clean lap in Q3, and I am happy to start from the front row, which we didn’t expect yesterday. 
The team has been doing an incredible job in developing our upgrades and bringing them to the car so quickly. If we have an opportunity to get ahead in the race, I will do everything to take it and bring home a well deserved result for the team.

I\'m pleased with today\'s result, especially considering the improvements we made after yesterday. The team did an amazing job overnight to understand the issues and make the right changes, and the car felt much better today. From Q1 through to Q3, the execution was excellent and everyone did a fantastic job.
We\'re continuing to make progress through lots of small improvements. The updated power unit is another step in that direction, and it\'s great to see everyone at the factory continuing to push race after race to help us move forward. I\'m really proud of the work we\'ve done together, and it\'s encouraging to see it starting to pay off.
I left a little bit on the table with my first run in Q3, which was on me, and that affected a bit how I approached the final attempt. But overall, I\'m happy with where we\'ve ended up and we\'ll keep pushing. A big thank you to all the fans here in Austria as well — the support and the energy they bring every year is always incredible.

It’s been a positive weekend so far and we’ve been able to show good pace as we’ve progressed through the sessions. The final lap in qualifying was coming together well and looked like it could have been close to George, which is encouraging and a learning experience for me.

I’ve been feeling comfortable in the car, and we’ve shown particularly strong pace on the long runs, so that gives us a good platform heading into tomorrow.

It’s going to be a challenging race with the conditions and high tyre degradation, so managing that will be key. There is a lot to play for and with different strategies possible, we’ll aim to move forward and maximise the result.

It was a shame what happened in Q3 today, but I am all okay. We only had three sets of tyres going into qualifying and we were pretty tight going into Q3, but it worked out. My laps felt really nice in Q2 and the first lap of Q3 felt strong. Then, on my second lap, the car started to feel a bit snappy and I had a big oversteer in T6. In T9 there was a big loss of rear end grip and the car spun out at high speed. I had an uncontrollable spin and the wheel fully locked. We lost aero performance due to some damage on the rear of the car, which caused the issue. The car span off and the situation was out of my hands unfortunately.

It is a shame, but, realistically, we wouldn’t have been fighting for pole. The lap was coming together really nicely and I think I could have been P3. Now, we just need to look ahead to tomorrow. The car is not that badly damaged, so there\'s hopefully not too much to change on it. We have good mechanics and I trust them to make the changes we need to be competitive tomorrow. The race pace has been a bit off and we have had a few limitations over the last few races, but we will have to see how we go tomorrow.

Overall, it’s been a good day, and P6 is a result we aren\'t too far away with. It’s easy to look at the practice times and hope for more, but we know the cars ahead are strong as we’ve seen throughout the season. Realistically, this is probably where we currently are in the pack, but we have our strengths in the package that we’ll look to exploit, and we\'re close enough to be in the fight tomorrow.

The race is going to be incredibly hot, and tyre degradation will be a major factor, much like it was in Barcelona. A lot can happen with strategy and pit stops, but if we can manage the race well and take advantage of any opportunities, we’ll be in condition to secure a good result.

P7. Today’s result feels like a realistic reflection of where we are at the moment. We did a good job of maximising our package, and the lap times between myself and Lando have been incredibly close all weekend, which suggests we extracted nearly everything we could from the car. Unfortunately, we\'re just missing that final bit of pace compared to our closest competitors. We can see Mercedes has an edge, and Ferrari are strong, so we know the areas we need to improve.

Looking ahead to the race, it will be hot, so tyre management will be absolutely key, especially as the competition around us will be very tight on race pace. We will analyse everything overnight and see what we can do strategy-wise. We’ll give it our best and see what we can achieve.

In FP2, I didn’t feel happy with the setup of the car, but in FP3 I did from the very first lap, so I knew it would be a better day straight away. Halfway through qualifying I was on a bit of a plateau performance wise, which we corrected for that final lap, which I\'m pleased with. The guys did a good job progressing and bringing upgrades this weekend and I extracted all I could from the car, but we had a few deployment issues when it mattered, so the result doesn’t show its full potential. I think we should’ve been higher up the grid today, but tomorrow should be interesting with strategy.

It’s been a very good weekend so far with both cars making it into Q3. The car has felt strong across all sessions, and I’m really happy with the work everyone is doing, both here at the track and behind the scenes. A few teams arrived with upgrades this weekend, so we knew it was going to be a real challenge and it was still incredibly close, but to come out on top of the midfield is a really strong result. Tomorrow is going to be a tough race and temperatures are expected to be high. It probably won’t be quite as demanding on the tyres as Barcelona, but degradation will still be a factor with how much we’re sliding around. We will work overnight to make sure we are in the best position to hopefully score points.

It was a positive Saturday. The team has done a really great job once again by giving us a fast and competitive car. It\'s nice to see both cars in Q3, it\'s a good team result, so massive credit to them. Overall, my last push lap was not that bad. There was a tenth and a half more if I\'d have done everything perfectly, but considering where we were at the beginning of the weekend, it\'s not a bad place to start the race. I\'m confident going into tomorrow; we all expect high temperatures again, so the tyre degradation will play an important role in the race but hopefully not as aggressively as it did in Barcelona.

We really tried to get the best result today, but I knew it was going to be tight. The first lap in Q1 was a good one, which allowed us to keep a second new set of tyres going into Q2 and give us the best shot at getting into the top 10. My last lap in Q2 really felt like a good one and, crossing the line, I thought this is the lap that gets me through but it wasn\'t quite enough. I\'m confident there wasn\'t that much more in it and the Racing Bulls seem to be a bit faster this weekend. If we could have qualified in front of one of them, it would have been a bonus. I must say, I\'m pleased with the step we made from yesterday, we\'ve felt a lot stronger so I\'m optimistic for tomorrow. The battle is really with the Racing Bulls and I\'m hoping to get one of them at the start. Yesterday, in terms of tyre degradation, it felt pretty good and on Sundays, we seem to make a bit more of a step, so it\'ll be a nice fight and hopefully we\'re in a position to score points.

I\'m really happy with my lap today, and in general with how the weekend has gone so far. We may have missed out on the top ten, but I feel that qualifying lap was as close to ideal as it could have been, and the pace we\'ve had across every corner was very encouraging. I hadn’t been able to put the car in a comfortable window in the last few races, but it seems like we\'ve gone in a different direction here: the upgrades we are bringing this weekend seem to be working in a way that suits us better.

Everyone has been working incredibly hard, both at Hinwil and Neuburg, together with the trackside team, and it\'s nice to see that effort paying off. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction, and we can keep building our confidence from here. Now, the focus is on tomorrow\'s race, bring the confidence back up and start building from there.

On one hand, I’m happy with my performance as I did a great lap in Q1, and I felt like I did the same in Q2. I don’t think there was much more left in the car, and that’s a satisfying feeling for a driver, but my bigger feeling is one of disappointment. In the last five races, this is the best feeling I\'ve had in the car with how it drives, yet our competitiveness is still the same. I always go into qualifying thinking that if everything goes well, and I do a mega lap, I can make some type of miracle happen and get into Q3, but today we showed that despite all of that, we were nowhere near.

It’s been a challenging weekend so far. Around here the margins are always incredibly small, and I just didn’t quite find the rhythm with the car in qualifying. On a circuit like this, that makes a big difference. This circuit hasn’t suited us quite as well as Barcelona, and we know there are still areas we need to improve.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, I’m more optimistic. Our long-run pace looked more encouraging than our qualifying pace, and with the temperatures expected to stay high, tyre management and reliability will be key. There should still be opportunities if we execute a clean race.

It was a very good lap to get into Q2 after the team put in an amazing effort to change many parts on the car overnight. We\'re still struggling with a few issues that we need to look into, as we don\'t really know why that\'s the case, so we need to investigate it further. I hope it won\'t give us a hard time in the race tomorrow, but I trust the team to fix it as soon as possible, as it\'s been quite difficult out there.

It wasn\'t the best result for us in Qualifying today, as we didn\'t really put a competitive lap together in Q2 and weren\'t able to show what we were potentially capable of. The car felt a bit better this afternoon and felt like it had improved from the morning\'s session, where we struggled to find the right balance. The car still felt unpredictable when pushing and trying to find the limit, which you need to around here, and leave nothing on the table. With the short track and very small gaps between teams, you have to push hard otherwise you can find yourself three or four places down the order. Ultimately, that\'s what happened on my final lap in Q2, where I pushed at the start of the lap and tried to carry more speed into Turn 1 and had a big snap. I went off track and aborted the lap. It\'s a pity we couldn\'t complete a final push lap and give ourselves the opportunity to start higher up tomorrow. The car tends to feel stronger in the race on high fuel and hopefully we can move forward and challenge those immediately ahead of us.

Whilst it’s been a tough weekend, I’m very happy with my last lap in Q1 and nearly made it through to Q2. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough pace. We’ve been struggling with grip and the weight of the car all weekend and when you combine it with the heat, it’s just too many issues to move up the field. A lot of teams have also brought upgrades and we’re really noticing it this weekend. Hopefully this is a low point and from Silverstone onwards we return to the improvement path. Looking to the race tomorrow, it’s going to be a struggle, but reliability is always a factor at play, so we’ll do the best we can and keep an eye out for any opportunities.

A frustrating Saturday, but there\'s not much more we could have done today. We\'ve made positive changes throughout the weekend between sessions, but unfortunately we just don’t have the pace. In turns 1-4 we can fight in the midfield, but through the high-speed corners the gap is exposed, which is an extension of what we saw in Barcelona. We spent FP3 focused on long runs and race pace rather than one-lap pace, but we did expect more from this weekend, however I think with the heat it’s exposed us more. Hopefully we can recover some positions in the race with this track having overtaking opportunities, so we\'ll try to exploit them.

It was tricky today given we were on the back foot after the stoppages yesterday, but generally speaking we maximized what we could. We focused on race preparation instead as we know how important and tricky tire degradation will be around here tomorrow. It’s super close out there but I feel like we have good race pace so hopefully this approach will pay off.

There was a bit more in it today. I was a bit too close to Checo on the last run with traffic so there were probably a couple tenths more that I missed out on. Despite the issues we faced yesterday, we managed to put the car in a decent window with the upgrades working. We know we need to keep chipping away at the gap to the midfield. Tomorrow will be a tough test with the high temperatures but let’s see what we can do.

The result is where we expected to be, but I feel we have taken steps forward so far this weekend. Since FP1 yesterday, the predictability and consistency across the car has felt better. The team has worked hard to make improvements where we can, and we will continue working in preparation for tomorrow. It will be tough, but I’m happy with the progress we have made.

We probably could have gotten a bit more out of Qualifying today: I lost time on my final lap in Q1 with a lock-up in Turn 4 and we had to abort the lap. It’s the same car we have been dealing with since the start of the season, so we know where we stand. But we are all pushing as a team for improvements and that’s what everybody is focused on right now. We will see what we can do tomorrow.