Esteban Ocon: "I'm feeling pretty pleased with our performance tonight. We are back in Q3 after a huge effort by the team over the last two weeks. We did a huge amount of work yesterday - testing, learning and understanding things on the car - and we can already see the improvement compared to Melbourne. It's a good sign for the future and it shows the strength of this team even when we are under pressure. The car felt strong tonight and I think we are in good shape for tomorrow. Points are the target and we have good straight-line speed and decent race pace."

Sergio Perez: "I am happy with what we achieved today. We made some good progress and we turned out to be closer to the front of the midfield than I thought we would be. I missed out on making Q3 by a very small margin, but it's not too bad to be starting from P12. Grid position is not as important here as in other places so there is still plenty to fight for tomorrow. I think we can score some points and it's definitely a big opportunity for us. It's going to be a long race and I think tyre management will be very important so hopefully that will play to our advantage."

Otmar Szafnauer: "It has been a very intense couple of weeks working behind the scenes since Melbourne to understand the car better and make improvements. Tonight's results suggest we are moving in the right direction with both drivers showing competitive pace in the very close midfield battle. We are traditionally stronger in racing conditions and with Esteban starting from P8 and Checo in P12, we have a good opportunity to score points tomorrow."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Bahrain, here.