24/11/2018
NEWS STORY
Sebastian Vettel: "I think that today we correctly worked out the direction to take in terms of tyre strategy and we were able to make it work. Yesterday we had tried everything, but the Hypersoft tyres didn't last for long, so we were quite confident they weren't the tyres we wanted to start the race on. Today I knew in my second run I had some lap time to gain and I wanted to start on the Ultrasofts, so that's why I was happy to take the risk and do my second run in Q2 on the same compound.
"In general, I've been happy with our session. For tomorrow I would have liked to start from the front row, but our main rivals probably had saved some performance cushion for the last run in Q3. As I told the guys in the garage, in the race we will fight as much as we can; then anything might happen. Today we had good speed on the straights, but I guess we were lacking a little bit of downforce in the last sector, so let's see what we can do. For sure, it is going to be a long race."
Kimi Raikkonen: "It was a solid qualifying session and I think there was nothing wrong with the car today, nothing to complain about. In fact, it worked pretty well, we were only lacking a bit of speed especially in Sector 3; that's where we were losing the most and it has been like that for all the week end. Our competitors were probably playing around a bit in the first part of the session, then in the end the margin was bigger. As for tomorrow, I can only say that we are going to do our best. We will start the race on the Ultrasoft tyres, which hs the choice all the top teams have made. We hadn't tested that kind of compound before today, and in terms of race pace, we have some figures from Friday's long runs, but practice is another story from the race itself and usually, on Sunday, the gaps close up a little bit."
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