Esteban Ocon: "We're progressing in the right direction, but we cannot be satisfied with the result and where we are right now.

"The car was the best it's felt since the start of the season and we extracted the most we could. I pushed the limits today - and more - clipping the wall at the final corner on my first run in Q1. I was fortunate not to pick up any damage and we could turn the car around quickly. We kept pushing to the end and managed to progress through to the next part of Qualifying. That was really the maximum today, but we're aware we still need to find some performance to make that next step. We've seen that a lot can happen here in the race, and as we've seen in the past, if you stay out of trouble, you can seize opportunities to move up the field."

Pierre Gasly: "We were having a fairly decent session up until my final run in Qualifying. It felt like we had a small downshift issue on the lap, so there's certainly some frustration not to be in Q2 today. The laps across Q1 were good up until the lap, which matters most at the end. We are still far from where we want to be - some things are not going our way - and there is lots of analysis ahead of us. Still, we tried to maximise the car in tricky conditions and we just have to keep improving our understanding of what we have in our hands. It won't be an easy race with tyre degradation. Maybe there will be some opportunities and we'll give it our best for the best possible result."

Bruno Famin, Team Principal: "Both drivers did their best today to extract the maximum from the car. We are struggling more on the Soft tyre and we must continue our understanding of our overall package to maximise performance. We expect better pace in tomorrow's race on the harder compound tyres. It appears degradation is high at this circuit and strategy tomorrow will be key. We will give it our all and aim to capitalise on any opportunities that might arise to come away with a good team result."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Melbourne here.