|
Nicholas Latifi:
"The
conditions out there were tricky, but I was surprised with how
comfortable I felt as it was the first real wet session that I have been
given the green light to push fully in. I am disappointed as we could
have easily made it into Q2. My pace on the first set of tyres was in
the top fifteen but I just didn’t get a clear lap on the second set.
Every lap was either traffic or a yellow flag and then the red flag. I
think there was much more in there, so I am just a bit frustrated." |
|
George Russell:
Q2 was our target this weekend, but if someone told me it would be less
than a tenth to Q3, I wouldn’t have believed that. It was incredibly
tricky out there. I couldn’t see at many points, but I gave it
everything I had, and it worked out. The car was feeling good and I had
a lot of fun out there. I am really pleased for all the guys who come
week in week out fighting. It is not quite the true pace of our car, but
it’s a real boost for everyone in the team. Overall it was a great
qualifying session, I am really happy and let’s see what we can do
tomorrow." |
|
Dave Robson, Senior Race Engineer:
"As forecast yesterday, the weather was poor today with a lot of rain
from mid-morning onwards. This led to the cancellation of FP3 and for a
while it looked like the qualifying session may also succumb to the
rain. However, following an initial delay the session was run in full
wet conditions.
For those on the pitwall, this kind of session can be very difficult due
to the sheer number of things that can happen, and the short lap length
of Austria only makes this worse as the traffic backs up. However, on
this occasion, we followed our plan very well and we used all our
previous experience to give both drivers good opportunities to exceed
the performance of the car.
Both drivers drove exceptionally well in the conditions and both had
very good pace throughout Q1. Neither have much experience of driving
our cars in proper wet conditions, but both were superb today. Nicholas
was extraordinarily unlucky with both a yellow flag and, later, a red
flag spoiling laps that were comfortably good enough to qualify him for
Q2. This was a big shame as we had the pace to get both cars close to
the top 10 today, but we must accept that this is the nature of wet
qualifying.
George opted to start his session a little later and he was more
fortunate with the flags. However, his pace was strong throughout and he
fully deserved his place in Q2. For Q2 we had only one set of new tyres
remaining and opted to fit them for the beginning of the session. This
proved to be a good decision as conditions steadily worsened. Along with
his own inherent pace, this decision helped him to outqualify Stroll and
also to get extremely close to Leclerc.
Tomorrow we are expecting a dry race and we think that the car will
perform well in those conditions. With the help of the factory we have
made a few changes to the cars since last weekend and we are now looking
forward to racing hard throughout tomorrow as we aim to secure a strong
top 10 finish." |
