Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: It was incredibly tight today and we missed a place in Q2 by the smallest of margins. The Alternative Tyre Allocation worked fine today; there was a lot of on-track action in Q1, which made finding a gap in the traffic more difficult than usual. Alex and Logan were mostly in good positions although Alex had to complete the final couple of corners in the wake of the McLaren.
Considering that we expected to struggle here more than at recent tracks, today wasn’t too bad and with a very modest improvement in lap time we could’ve been considerably further up the grid.
Every driver has a number of race tyres for tomorrow, but with differing quantities of new and used tyres available, it could make for an interesting strategic battle. Although overtaking is traditionally difficult here, there will still be opportunities to make progress and we have a race car that can do just that.
Alex Albon: If you look at Qualifying, it wasn’t a bad session as we were right in the mix – one tenth would have moved us up a few places. It’s frustrating to be so close to Q2 but it’s a bit more representative of our overall pace. It shows we’re making progress but it’s also good to come to tracks like this as it helps us to understand our car and highlight the issues. Even the tyre compounds went against us I believe as the harder tyres have less grip, so soft tyres tend to hide our problems, whilst hard tyres expose us more. It was always going to be tricky but, ultimately, I believe the Alternative Tyre Allocation penalises us more than the top teams who can save on tyres and be better prepared for Sunday.
Logan Sargeant: I think if everything had gone perfect, we had a chance to go to Q2 today, but it was a messy lap. It was difficult going straight to Qualifying on the hard tyre as neither of us had driven it yet this weekend [due to the Alternative Tyre Allocation format of the race] and it wasn’t easy to put a lap together. Although I’m sure everyone struggled and had time to find today, I’m mainly frustrated with myself; I’ve been driving well all weekend, I feel like we had the pace to do something good and I could pick out at least half a second on that lap that was left out there. With the tyre format this weekend, we’ve been so limited on laps. Strategy-wise tomorrow, we’ll be fine as we saved a set of hard tyres. A few people have used all their sets, which I don’t think will feel good for them tomorrow, but from our side we have the tyres we need for the race so hopefully that will play into our hands.
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