30/06/2018
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "It was a good day, we looked more competitive than we did last week in Paul Ricard, which is positive. We still need to work a bit harder and find more performance to fight with the guys in Q3, but I'm happy with the lap I did and I think we maximised the package we had. The car felt good, I think in terms of chassis things are looking quite positive, but we know with the straight line speed we are still a bit behind Mercedes and Ferrari, so overall we made a good step but there's still work to be done. However, P12 is not a bad place to start the race tomorrow because we will have the freedom to choose the tyres."
Brendon Hartley: "Not a good qualifying, I was out of Q1 and three-tenths of a second off my team-mate. It hasn't really been a clean weekend, I had some of the new aero updates yesterday which didn't go 100% to plan, but then I think we got on top of it today. I damaged my front wing in FP3 which meant I ran the old wing in Qualifying. It was a decision made right before the session because of lack of spare parts, so I ran a bit of a hybrid between specs, of course it was not ideal but today Pierre did a better job and the new front wing would not have given me 3 tenths but may have helped to squeeze through to Q2. My last lap wasn't particularly clean and I got too close to the car in front trying to get a slipstream. The midfield is very tight and 1 tenth faster would have got me through to Q2. I am disappointed with P19 but will fight in tomorrow."
James Key (Technical Director): "As we could clearly understand from yesterday, it was extremely close in our area of the pack. I have to say Haas have been strong all weekend and they were ahead of the rest of the midfield, and it was up to the rest of us to try and get in directly behind them, on this short circuit the margins are very small. This morning Brendon's car had a better balance and in Pierre's case it wasn't quite there and we had work to do, but we gradually pulled it together and we knew what steps we needed to make for qualifying. Q3 was going to be tough but possible today, just a couple of tenths could make a big difference and that is what it boiled down to in the end. We didn't really make a step forward in Pierre's second run, but to be fair he extracted as much as we had today and I don't think it would have been possible to go much quicker. Ocon is three-hundredths of a second quicker and P10 was less than a couple of tenths, so it's a shame. However, the advantage of being just behind the top 10 with the tyre selection is relevant here after what we saw on Friday so we are in a position to fight for a top ten place tomorrow. In Brendon's case he improved quite a bit in FP3, and although he finished on the last row in qualifying today it was also a question of a few tenths of a second."
Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director): "Looking at our pace in the other sessions, we had hoped to make it through to Q3 this afternoon. But with a very competitive midfield, Pierre just missed the cut to Q3 by two tenths of a second. Nevertheless, our long run pace in free practice looked quite competitive and we will plan our strategy thoroughly with the team tonight, so let's hope we can have a stronger race and aim for some points tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Spielberg, here.