13/04/2019
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez: "P12 is a good result - we were less than a tenth away from making Q3 so I feel quite happy with our performance considering our speed in practice. With a perfect lap we could have made the top ten, but the windy conditions made it tricky out there today. The midfield is so tight and if you don't have a perfect lap, you can miss out. I would have preferred to be P11, but we are in a nice position. There is a question mark as to whether the soft or medium tyre is the best, but we will evaluate the data with the engineers this evening and make our decision. We have free tyre choice for the start and, with a good strategy, I think we can make up some ground tomorrow and aim for points."
Lance Stroll: "A frustrating session. I don't feel I got as much out of it as I should, so it could definitely have been better. I'm not quite getting to grips with the car 100% yet and I made some mistakes on my lap, which cost us a couple of tenths and, in the end, that's all it takes. It's very, very tight in the midfield and every tenth counts. My race pace is generally pretty good and I believe we can be stronger tomorrow, but when it comes to Saturdays we need to sort a few things out to really unlock that extra bit of performance. We started sixteenth in Australia and finished ninth, so there's no reason why we can't do the same thing here. It's a long race, I generally make good starts, and you can score points from wherever you start on the grid, so that's what I'm aiming to do tomorrow."
Andrew Green: "The changes we made overnight took us in a better direction this morning, but track time was limited with final practice being cut short. Lance didn't have a particularly clean lap in Q1 and just missed out on making it through to Q2. As we saw in Melbourne and Bahrain, a tenth here and there can have a big impact on your your starting position. Sergio progressed smoothly to Q2 and will line up in P12 tomorrow, which opens up some nice strategy options. Scoring points won't be easy, but I think we can race intelligently and bring ourselves into contention."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Shanghai, here.