30/09/2017
NEWS STORY
Carlos Sainz: "I'm not surprised with ending up P14 today because it's more or less where we've been all weekend... It's for sure something we need to look into, because at the moment we're a bit too far away from Q3. Before coming here we thought we'd be performing a bit better than what we have done up until now - the updates we've brought here aren't really working as well as we expected, at least not for now. Having said that, it's also true that we haven't been able to do that many laps this weekend to properly learn about it all, so we just need to keep working hard. We usually come back a bit on race day, so hopefully we can be part of a good midfield battle and recover a bit of ground. If it rains, anything can happen as we saw in Singapore, so I welcome a wet race but, if not, we will just need to keep our heads down and see where we end up. Whatever happens, we will try and do our best, that's for sure!"
Pierre Gasly: "I think today was positive and I'm happy - your first qualifying in Formula 1 is always a special moment and one I was really looking forward to! I tried to give my best and I think we made really good progress between FP3 and Qualifying. I felt comfortable in the car in Q1 and then, in Q2, I kept on learning while giving my all and I'd say we can be satisfied with the result! I now look forward to tomorrow, my first Formula 1 race and something I've been dreaming of since I was very young...! I expect it to be a really good experience and I hope to keep improving tomorrow as well. You never know what can happen with the weather here so, if the rain and tricky conditions do appear, I will welcome it as I felt confident in the wet in FP1 on Friday and I'm sure it will make it all even more exciting!"
James Key (Technical Director): "A disappointing day today after only qualifying in P14 and P15. Even if we had brought some updates here, we certainly haven't been quick enough at this track - I think there wasn't much more to come from the car and I hope that our race pace will be a bit quicker than in today's Quali, which is normally the case. We've now got some ground to make up; we'll go back to the factory and understand why we are where we are at this particular track, but there are certain elements of this circuit that perhaps don't suit some of the characteristics of our car particularly well. Having said that, it was a good effort from both drivers - they got probably as much out of it as they could. Pierre has been really good all weekend. He's had very little time to prepare, completed very few laps, and to be just a few tenths behind his teammate is a really excellent performance from him in his first ever Qualifying. This is definitely a positive that we've taken from today. We now need to knuckle down for tomorrow and think about how we can limit the damage and try and move forwards."