Sebastian Vettel: "I am feeling happier after that session. We are starting inside the top 10 and will be in the middle of a big fight for points. There is still a lot of hard work ahead of us, but things are starting to click for me and become a bit more automatic, which is helping me focus more on my driving. I am still learning about the car, but today I felt more comfortable. The conditions were tricky - despite the sunshine - and the gusts of wind were quite unpredictable and made the car feel quite light. My final lap in Q3 was not the best. The wind direction had changed again, and I lost some time as a result, which is costly when the midfield is so tight. Overall, though, it was a better session for me. Let's see what we can do tomorrow."

Lance Stroll: "A difficult qualifying session and we did not manage to build on the performance level we showed yesterday. I was not very comfortable in the car today and I could not lean on it as much. The traffic at the end of Q1 also did not help and cost me some time on my second run. It is quite a change from yesterday, so we will go away and understand where we can improve and do better next time. Even though today's result is disappointing, I think we will be stronger in the race. That has been the case in the previous two races. It is a track where we saw lots of overtaking last year and I will be pushing hard to make up ground tomorrow. With a strong first lap and a good strategy, I think we can score points."

Otmar Szafnauer, CEO & Team Principal: "It was great to see Sebastian getting to grips with the AMR21 - literally - over the twists, turns, uphills and downhills of Portimao this afternoon. We made a few set-up changes prior to qualifying, and it seemed they worked well, because he was 'on it' throughout Q1 and Q2. In Q3, he was not as competitive, ending up P10. Lance was badly affected by traffic in Q1, and the tricky, windy conditions did not help him either; as a result, he just failed to get through to Q2. But he has been driving extremely well so far this year, he says he will be striving to score points tomorrow, and we think that is a legitimate ambition despite his P17 grid slot."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Portimao, here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Saty1, 01/05/2021 21:00

"Having a very fast car in the fashion that Aston Martin/Racing Point have is not progress if you don't know how the car got that way, you can buy or copy a car but not understanding it. Without that it is hard to make improvements to keep up. I think that is how the Stroll family does it. His son wants to race cars, buy him seats, then buy him a team. It must be nice. Anyway I wish them luck in the future, but this year may be a hard one but 2022 rule changes may benefit them. I mean I am happy that we can say "The Aston Martin F1 racing team.""

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Portugal GP: Qualifying team notes - Aston Martin

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