14/11/2015
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen: "Today's was a good qualifying session. I think we can be very happy, as we were able to get into Q3, something that I didn't think we would achieve today! This isn't the best track for us and we were still able to perform well, qualify in front of Lotus - our main rivals - and stay close to the Red Bulls. I expect a difficult race tomorrow, especially regarding tyres. A lot will depend on the strategy, but we have a good car and I'm really looking forward to the challenge."
Carlos Sainz: "What a tricky day. Our qualifying session was unfortunately a bit of a troubled one - the dash on my steering wheel wasn't working so I didn't have any lap time data and we had a little clutch issue at the start of the last run in Q2, which did not help my run... it hasn't been an easy Saturday but, on the positive side, I have to say that the car felt better than yesterday. We now have a race to do tomorrow and I'm happy with my starting grid position and we can choose the tyre strategy. I think we can have a strong race tomorrow."
Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance): "With a number of questions to answer following Friday running some good work overnight from the engineers and mechanics resulted in both cars taking a good step forward in performance terms for FP3. Our short-run pace looked better compared to yesterday and overall both cars were more balanced and predictable so we were quite happy with that. However, we knew that to get both cars into Q3 would have been difficult given the small lap time deltas between the cars we are fighting with. Q1 went pretty much as expected with both drivers progressing but Q2 was less straight forward for Carlos with an electrical issue affecting his dash and clutch control and although this issue did not limit performance, it was a distraction for Carlos. Max was more fortunate and got through Q2 without problems and then went on to complete his single Q3 run but with some cars ahead finding a bit more performance during Q3 he ended up 10th. We now switch our focus to the race and with Carlos we have some interesting tyre strategy options to consider and with both drivers showing some reasonable long run pace on Friday, the expectation is that we can fight for points with both cars tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery, here.