02/09/2017
NEWS STORY
Daniil Kvyat: "It was definitely not easy out there today! We had a few balance issues and I was fighting to stay on track almost at every corner; a lot of wheel spin everywhere too! At times it was also difficult to decide what tyre to go out on - sometimes the track was for extremes, sometimes for inters... But I'm happy with the decisions taken today and, all in all, it was a decent session from my side, I did my best. For tomorrow, it's not going to be an easy race, especially if it's dry - this is not a track that suits us. Having said that, we will of course try our best and see where we end up."
Carlos Sainz: "A very difficult qualifying today and hard to read the weather as well... It was also quite tricky out there! At the beginning of the session I had no feeling with the intermediate tyres and I felt more comfortable on extremes. In the end we decided to move back to the inter, as everyone was improving on that tyre, but we had very low grip - this is because of the set-up compromise we are running for tomorrow, when it should be dry. Hopefully this will help tomorrow, because today in these conditions it was always going to be difficult. We were running with less downforce than our competitors, that's why I was struggling a lot out there, especially in the corners. For tomorrow, when we're expecting a totally dry race, we'll be starting from the back because of our grid penalty, but we will try our best to make up as many positions as possible and see where we end up!"
Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance): "Very busy evening going through our own data but also conducting the normal competitor analysis, as we are missing some long-run data. With FP3 being rain effected, we opted to conduct a single short-run to check the various settings which are rain specific and this was completed without any issues. With the rain continuing into qualifying, with some variation in intensity forecast, we were prepared for a mixed session. Q1 was disrupted early on with a red flag, meaning we only got a single timed lap before the red flag came out. At the restart, we fitted full wet to both cars moving to the inter later in the session but, although both cars made the cut for Q2, this tyre was not yet working as we wanted. We employed the same strategy for Q2, also making some setting changes to try and bring the inter tyre in. However, with both cars still struggling with balance on this tyre, we were not able to close a clean lap and could not progress on this occasion. We now switch our attention to race strategy, investigating which options can allow both cars the best opportunity to maximise point scoring opportunities."