11/05/2019
NEWS STORY
Carlos Sainz: "Today was a tricky session and we still need to analyse why. We were looking good in quali until Q2. A snap in Turn Five in my last attempt compromised my lap so I tried to recover in Sector Three, pushed too hard and did a mistake. That's it.
"I'm confident with our race pace and the weekend is not over yet, so we'll prepare thoroughly for tomorrow."
Lando Norris: "I'm pretty happy. I improved almost everywhere on my final push laps but maybe a small mistake cost me a couple of places and ultimately a place in Q3. We knew from yesterday quali wasn't going to be amazing but hopefully our race pace looks more promising.
"I'm looking forward to tomorrow with a free choice of tyres having qualified P11, but will move up one place due to penalties. Not a bad day but getting through to Q3 would have been better."
Andreas Seidl, Team Principal: "Our preparation for qualifying was not ideal today as the two red flags and damage on Carlos' car affecting his car balance didn't give us perfect data. We went into quali knowing that there were only a couple of positions left in the top 10 and that we would be fighting with very close competition. Overall performance was just not enough by a few hundredths to get us through to Q3. We now switch our focus to preparing for the race.
"We saw some encouraging long runs yesterday in free practice, and now we have the opportunity of a free tyre choice for the start of the race. Both put us in a good position to fight for points tomorrow."