24/11/2018
NEWS STORY
Renault Sport Formula One Team will start the final race of the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship with Nico Hulkenberg tenth and Carlos Sainz eleventh. Carlos just missed out on Q3 by two hundredths of a second, but will have the strategic advantage of a free tyre choice.
Nico Hulkenberg: "I feel like I got everything out of the car and it was satisfying to get into Q3, but unfortunately the others just got a bit more pace in that last session. We should be more competitive in the race as we have the package to be able to fight and race hard. There will be four cars from the midfield teams fighting it out – I think it's going to be interesting tomorrow."
Carlos Sainz: "Today was a difficult end to qualifying. The midfield was again extremely tight and finding a few tenths was a real challenge. After a strong first run in Q2, I struggled with oversteer and rear locking on the second run and just missed the top 10. I am confident we can target the points tomorrow. Start, strategy and pit stops will all be crucial, but we are ready for it."
How would you review today's Qualifying session?
Alan Permane, Sporting Director: We were pleased to get Nico into Q3 but not particularly happy with the way the car behaved in that last session as we didn't seem to get the lap time improvement that we expected. Carlos just missed out on the top ten but if there is any silver lining, he has a free tyre choice. However we are well-placed with both cars and where we need to be to achieve our aims in the race tomorrow.
What's the predicted strategy for the race?
AP: We are taking a very low risk approach to the weekend as a whole as fourth place is all but secured. All the same we need to make sure we are in the running in case anything happens in the race. It looks like it will be a fairly straightforward race, but we will keep focussed until the very end.
Check out our Saturday gallery from Yas Marina, here.