24/11/2018
NEWS STORY
Sergey Sirotkin qualified 19th and Lance Stroll 20th for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Both drivers qualified on the hypersoft Pirelli tyre. Sergey set a time of 1:38.635 on his final flying lap in Q1 to finish 19th. Lance bettered his second flying lap to a 1:38.682 but was unable to improve his position finishing the session in 20th.
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: Sergey had a pretty difficult practice and wasn't comfortable in the car, but by the time it got to qualifying he delivered all that the car was capable of delivering. Lance brought to a close a difficult season from a qualifying point of view. However, having two cars at the back of the grid provides plenty of motivation for us to work extremely hard over the winter in order to move ourselves forward for the 2019 season.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was very tough. The lap took a lot more from me than it probably seemed from the outside. The weekend so far has been the worst of the year for me the way it was going, with the struggles I had and the amount of work we had to put in. I didn't have any confidence going into qualifying, but I was really hard on myself and really motivated because I wanted to finish on a high. It took a lot from me physically and mentally to come back and perform at the top level. It hasn't been an ideal weekend, but I am happy and it is a little victory to recover like this. Thanks to the guys for supporting me all season long and especially to those who today were trying to understand what was going on and then make the best possible car for qualifying.
Lance Stroll: That was not very good. I am pretty frustrated with it to be honest. I thought there would have been much more, but we were just pretty slow, and the car was a lot different from how it has been all weekend, so I was a bit caught off guard by that. I think we had a decent balance all weekend and now that has changed. I don't know what happened, but I felt the car was very much on the understeer side. It has been kind of oversteer all weekend and now the balance shift is massive and I feel a bit frustrated, so that was the story of qualifying.
Check out our Saturday gallery from Yas Marina, here.