Fernando Alonso: "'I'm pretty happy with seventh. We were not competitive earlier today in FP3 - 14th and 15th - so I had doubts about our overall pace this weekend.

"Then, in Q1, we were stronger than expected: I built up confidence through every session, so P7 is a nice result. It's an art to adjust to the rapid track evolution here and changing from scrubbed soft tyres to a fresh set means there's a lot of mixed feedback from the car. It made qualifying tricky. I think tyre degradation is going to make it a race of survival tomorrow night - let's hope for some chaos."

Lance Stroll: "The AMR23 felt good today and I was happy with our pace in Q1; I just didn't get the perfect clean lap in during my final Q2 run. I was pushing hard and trying to extract the most from the car, but it just didn't come together. The incredibly tight field meant that losing a couple of tenths was enough to stop us progressing to Q3. We generally have good race pace on a Sunday though, so we will see what we can do tomorrow to climb through the field and round off the season with a good result."

Mike Krack, Team Principal: "A well-executed performance by the team this evening in a session where very small gaps made the difference. Our laps were solid and we did not leave much on the table. We can race well from there and I expect both cars to compete for points tomorrow. There are some question marks over the long-run pace across the grid, but I think we are in good shape. There is plenty to play for in both championships and we will give it our all to end the season on a high note."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Yas Marina here.