Fahrerstimmen – Tag 2

I'm very happy to be on Pole for the second time in a row. Today, the main difference was the driving; my final lap was one where I was just fully committed. It wasn't my cleanest ever lap because I was pushing so much and taking more risk, but that attacking mentality paid off and gives us the best possible starting position.

The Sprint Race was a little trickier, we struggled for rear grip and had to fight to hold on to third. Our race pace simply wasn't good enough, and we're clearly lacking in the slow speed corners, but we were able to work on that before Qualifying and find something to help us take Pole this afternoon.

Looking ahead to the race, I'm not as confident as I was in Budapest. We know our rivals are very strong, and I expect a much bigger challenge tomorrow. My job tonight is to work hard with the engineers, learn as much as we can from the Sprint, and prepare well for the race. It's going to be a tough one, but starting from P1 with clean air gives us a fighting chance.

It was good to start today with victory in the Sprint. It was a controlled race where I was mainly managing the tyres and the gap behind. We saw how close the field is at the front so track position was key. Overall, it’s positive to see that we’ve returned from the summer break with good pace and this has given me and the team a boost of confidence.

In the afternoon, it was an intense end to Qualifying. We knew there was rain on the way near the end of Q3, so we opted to pull our run programme forward. On my final effort, the first half of the lap was strong and my best of the weekend. I made a small mistake in the second half of the lap, increased the temperature of the tyres, and the lap time ran away a little. That was a shame as I think pole position was possible. Tomorrow will be an interesting race. The McLarens looked quick in the Sprint and have good track position with Norris. The Ferraris have been fast too so it is good for us that they qualified behind us. Track position is important, but it will be a long Grand Prix with plenty of interesting strategy options so let’s see what Sunday brings.

Today hasn’t been the easiest on my side. I didn’t feel fully comfortable with the car, particularly in Q1 in Qualifying, and it was difficult to find a rhythm. I started to get the feeling back towards Q3, but unfortunately, I made a mistake in Turn 1 on my final run. It's a shame because sector one cost me around two tenths and, although I managed to recover some of that through sectors two and three and still put together a lap that was good enough for P3, we could have been in the fight for pole.

Starting from the second row isn't a bad place to be, and there's still everything to play for tomorrow. The field is incredibly close, so I'm pleased to still come away with a decent grid spot despite the challenges. Tomorrow will be about attacking when opportunities present themselves but doing so in a smart way. The podium is certainly within reach, but our focus is on maximising the result and taking any opportunity that comes our way.

A reasonable day overall across both sessions. Even if the final Sprint and Qualifying result isn't quite what I wanted, the car felt good and it is encouraging to know that we are making progress and can compete at the sharp end. I’ll take these promising signs away and work with the team to look ahead at what work we can do to improve our race pace as the second half of the Sprint wasn't as strong as we'd like.

We know that overtaking is not easy here, so the start will be crucial tomorrow. We are in the mix with Mercedes and Ferrari, and hopefully, the changes we've made will put us in a stronger position to fight for a Podium finish.

After the Sprint race, we made a few adjustments to improve the balance and find a better window for qualifying. The car felt more comfortable, although it was still a tricky session as getting the tyres to work as we wanted was our biggest challenge and made it difficult to put everything together. 

We know there are still areas where we need to improve, but it’s good to be in a position to fight further up the order. It was also important to rebuild some confidence in qualifying with a new setup, which is never straightforward. I’m grateful to everyone in the team for the work they continue to put into the car and I’m looking forward to what tomorrow can bring.

We know how crucial qualifying was for this race so it’s going to be a challenge to start from P6. 

In the Sprint, our race pace was solid, and we took a risk starting on the Soft tyres that paid off in the end. It’s a tough track to overtake on, and we took our chance at the right moment to gain a position.

We have a few things we have to review from our qualifying, but I don’t think that pole was on the cards for us today. We’ll have to maximise the start and see what we can do with our strategy to try and get ahead of our competitors.

Over the weekend, we have tried different setup changes to the car, but it hasn’t made too much difference, which is a shame. We have been a bit limited with the balance, especially around the corners, and it has been difficult to push due to the lack of grip; we just haven’t got the car into a window that we are completely happy with. Looking to tomorrow, I think we need to be realistic about what we can do, as we are lacking a bit of pace. We will just need to manage our own race and see how we go and hopefully we can extract a bit more performance. Of course, with it being the final race in Zandvoort, it is still going to be special, and the feeling and energy in the crowd have been amazing all weekend. It will be something to enjoy here with the fans one last time

It’s been a challenging weekend so far, but I’m pleased with how I’ve adapted, and I felt Qualifying was a positive session for me. The Sprint was a good learning, overtaking was difficult, so to finish where we started was probably the maximum today. There’s a lot to adjust to in a short space of time, but the Team has done a great job getting me as comfortable as possible in the car. I’m grateful for all the work they’ve put in. Tomorrow will be tough, but the target is to hold our position, fight for points and keep learning. At the moment, Max is obviously the strongest reference I have, and it is good to see how close we are. But there’s still time to find and we’d like a bit more pace from the car for the race

It was a tricky qualifying session, but also an amazing one. I struggled in Q1 and nearly got knocked out, but I kept my head down, put together the lap I needed, and made my way through and eventually into the top ten. In the end, P9 was the most we could do today, and I'm really happy we extracted the maximum from the car. Looking back at the Sprint, I was quite happy with my pace, although we would have needed something more to move further up. If we can get another good start tomorrow, we might have another chance to be in the mix for a good result.

It's really good to end another Saturday in Q3. Zandvoort is a new track for me and I've been enjoying driving around here since the start of the weekend. Qualifying was a solid session overall, though I'm a bit disheartened by Q3. We found something with the build-up lap on the first run on the used Softs, but unfortunately we couldn't execute it on the final lap as the rain arrived. Still, it's a good starting position for tomorrow. I'm grateful to the team for the work they've done and for giving me a car I can always enjoy pushing in Qualifying. It's also good to see Yuki doing a great job and getting up to speed. We're in a solid position for tomorrow; it will be important to have a good start and then we'll be on the hunt for points.

It was great to score a point in the Sprint Race as it's been a little while since we have been in the points. We were able to translate our pace from yesterday into the Sprint today, which was positive. Track position certainly helped and I just tried to manage everything and bring home the P8 finish. I was pleased with that but certainly less pleased in Qualifying. It was a messy session for me and we just seemed to struggle a little more compared to yesterday on low fuel. We won't be too harsh on ourselves as the pace was there for Q3, less than a tenth of a second, so we will review and see what we can do better next time. It is still early days with the new part and we are still learning how best to maximise the entire package and have it in an optimal set-up window. We expect it to be tight once again in the midfield tomorrow. Our eyes are fully focused on those ahead and taking the fight to them in the race for the points.

I’m really happy with today’s result. It’s my first time properly being back in the car for eight months, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Throughout the session I was really focused on myself and the areas where I could improve, I’ve really enjoyed the process of finding the limit and understanding where I can push. It would have been nice to make it into Q3, but it was incredibly tight towards the end of Qualifying. We’re really close to the points for tomorrow, so the goal is to give it maximum push, make the most of every opportunity and enjoy it as much as possible.

It hasn't been the easiest weekend for us so far, and the power issue I suffered at the start of the Sprint meant I never really stood a chance there. Still, we managed to resolve the problem ahead of qualifying. I'm not unhappy with my lap, although on my final attempt I caught a bit of tailwind out of turn one, which made things difficult and cost me some lap time. Apart from that, it was a pretty clean lap. This is a track where rhythm and confidence are really important, and we haven't quite been able to find that consistently this weekend so far.

I was able to maximise the car in Qualifying today after what was a very good job by the whole team. Even though I couldn't complete my final lap because of traffic, up until then it was a very strong session for us. I had already done a good lap, and it is positive that we were close to the Racing Bulls and Audis. We made some small changes to the car after this morning's Sprint Race and were able to build on that performance for this afternoon. I'm happy with the gain we made, and the car felt better and more consistent. We obviously still need to wait for the new upgrade on my side but today our Qualifying was maximised, so I am pleased with that. Our goal is to go forwards in the race tomorrow, it will be tricky in dry conditions so some rain will be welcome, but we will try our best.

I think we were lacking a bit to the VCARB in the Sprint as they were pulling away from us, and we were pulling away from Williams behind, so Ollie and I were a bit in no man’s land. We split strategy, so that’s going to be interesting to choose which tire is best for tomorrow. It was quite a shame that the rain only came in the last lap, as it would’ve been fun for those watching. I don’t think we could’ve gone any faster in qualifying, it's three-tenths to the next car in front. I did a very good lap, well optimized, and there wasn’t anything we could’ve done better really. That’s where the performance is, which is difficult to say, but we need updates to come as quickly as they can – which should be the next race – for us to be able to fight higher up. We can do it when the car is healthy, and it’s been healthy for the last two events, so let's hope it can last.

I'm happy with that Q2 lap; we made a few changes that worked between the Sprint and qualifying, so the balance was better, but we're still struggling with pure downforce. I don't think I quite extracted the maximum in Q1, but I definitely did in Q2, and it's probably the most complete lap I've done in a while. We got into more of a rhythm today and were more consistent with our laps, so at least we got one Haas and both Astons behind us for tomorrow. We still need to understand why our starting setup was so far out, because that's something we can build on. With a better setup, maybe we can look after our tyres better too - that's going to matter tomorrow as the deg was high in the Sprint. Overtaking is trickier around Zandvoort, so I'm expecting some tyre games in the race and multiple stops. Let's see what Sunday brings.

Sprint weekends don’t leave much time to root out problems and we used the Sprint Race pretty much as a practice session, where we tried different things to improve the balance. This afternoon the car was feeling better and the changes we’ve done made it more comfortable to drive. My lap felt decent and we missed out on Q2 by a very thin margin. Tomorrow we’ll try our best to put everything together and execute a clean race to extract the maximum of our car and see where that takes us.

We were very close to getting into Q2 and more or less maximised what we had. We have work to do to improve the driveability of the car and to recover more lap time moving forward. All in all, I think we have to be happy to be 1.3 seconds from the leader in Q1, when just a few races ago we were on average 4 seconds adrift of the top teams. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow and enjoy our last race here in Zandvoort.

We've struggled with similar issues today as we did yesterday. There are improvements we need to make with the driveability and balance of the car, and that's where our focus needs to be. Our race pace seems to be better than our Qualifying pace. In Qualifying, we need to be able to push more to really attack the lap. But we're making progress, we're working hard, and we'll keep pushing to make another step forward.

The Sprint felt pretty good to be honest, I was quite happy, the tires felt good, and the pace felt decent. I believe the issues we’re struggling with feel less apparent in the race with this type of track, so I was much more pleased with the balance this morning. I’m really confused now after qualifying because the feeling was much better and in the car I was a bit happier compared to yesterday, and even this morning. I felt like I was more confident, but the lap time was even harder to come by. I struggled more to get it out of the car, so it’s quite confusing. We’ll do our best tomorrow.

In the Sprint Race we were hoping that we could fight with Aston Martin, but it seemed like they had the upper hand. We’ll see where we are in terms of race pace for tomorrow over a longer duration, but hopefully we can challenge them and even Williams. Regarding Qualifying, it’s never nice to see us at the back, but the gaps are not huge, so we’ll keep chipping away to improve the car and try our best tomorrow.

We had a hydraulic issue this morning, but the team did a great job to get the car back out for the Sprint, and we were able to show some promising pace. It’s a bit unfortunate that we’ve lost some competitiveness compared to this morning because of the changes we did, when we were able to get a lot out of the car. We’ll have to see what we can do tomorrow, but the pace we showed today gives us some encouragement. It’s still very early days for Marcin in the team, but he brings a lot of experience and strong leadership, so I’m confident he’ll help push us in the right direction over the coming weekends.