Qualifying Notes
- George Russell qualified 18th and Robert Kubica 19th for the German Grand Prix
- George set his best time, a 1:14.721, with his final effort on the soft compound tyre
- Robert posted a 1:14.839 on his last lap of the session to finish P19, also on the soft Pirelli tyre
Dave Robson, Senior Race Engineer: Overnight analysis of the items we tested yesterday showed that they were behaving well and so they were adopted on both cars for FP3. As we neared the end of our car build last night, a small issue was found on Robert’s chassis and so the decision was taken to swap it for the spare. The additional work meant that we had to break the curfew to get the spare car ready for FP3. The team worked extremely hard to make this happen and this helped Robert to enjoy a smooth day, enabling him to build on the background work he completed yesterday.
For George, his experience of the new parts was cut a little short in FP3 as we opted to take some time to modify part of the floor ahead of qualifying. This limited his opportunities to understand the behaviour of the new components and to get a feel for the tyres in today’s cooler conditions.
In qualifying both drivers had a busy but effective session, and both did a good job of managing their tyres and avoiding traffic on this short track. The drivers and their engineers extracted decent laptimes and made the most of the car.
The weather forecast for tomorrow remains uncertain and rain is quite possible. We will prepare as well as we can overnight and look forward to seeing how the new parts behave over the course of a race distance.
George Russell: It wasn’t an ideal day for us, as we damaged the floor on the out-lap in FP3 on some debris. Essentially, we didn’t have the updated package this morning because of that so our first go at it was in qualifying. It is definitely very different in terms of characteristics, but it is an improvement. We didn’t really have an opportunity to dial it in but we made the most of it. It is clear we still have work to do so we have got to keep pushing.
Robert Kubica: It was a difficult day, track conditions were different to yesterday, but I think the team saw some improvements in the data. We did everything we could, especially the mechanics. They didn’t have an easy time yesterday or indeed overnight with the chassis change, however they did a good job under difficult conditions. We extracted the maximum out of what we had today, and we must keep working hard to improve.
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