22/11/2014
NEWS STORY
Qualifying for tomorrow's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix saw Sergio Perez qualify in P13 just ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg in P14.
Sergio Perez: "Today wasn't an especially difficult day, but we simply didn't have the pace to extract a better position from qualifying. We expected this, which is why our set-up is more geared towards the race. The way the tyres are behaving here is quite different from the past in Abu Dhabi so we had to amend our set-up accordingly: we hope this will give us some advantage tomorrow. In any case, the strategy choices are quite limited on this track so I don't expect any adventurous choices from anyone on the grid. We have made some big changes compared to yesterday; hopefully they will pay off when it matters and we can close our season with another points finish."
Nico Hulkenberg: "Going into qualifying we knew we that our pace over one lap was not the best and that it would be difficult to make the top ten. With the set-up we chose it has been quite tricky to find a good harmony over one lap on this track. The good news is that our race pace looks stronger and I hope we can perform better tomorrow. Also, there are double points on offer, so everything counts twice. It's also the last race of the year so we should try and take some chances to finish the year in a good way."
Vijay Mallya, Team Principal & Managing Director: "We enter the final race of the season with nothing to lose and an outside chance of claiming fifth place - so we will need to give it our all tomorrow. Our one lap pace today was not that strong, but we are hopeful of a more competitive showing in the race. Unfortunately this is one of those circuits that always proves difficult for overtaking so our best chance is to try and do something with the strategy to bring our cars into play. Whatever happens tomorrow we look forward to a spectacular finale to the season and I look forward to the championship showdown between Lewis and Nico."
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