31/10/2020
NEWS STORY
George Russell qualified 13th and Nicholas Latifi 19th for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. George reached Q2 for the eighth time this season and set a best time of 1:15.323 on his final run. Nicholas set his quickest time of the Q1 session with a 1:15.987 on his penultimate timed lap.
Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: It has been a very good day and a pleasure to be back at this great circuit. Conditions have been very good all day and the team haven't put a foot wrong. We had a small issue with Nicholas's car this morning, which we tried to fix during the session, but, in the end, we had to take the time out to replace the faulty component. This was a shame - and we apologise to Nicholas - as it cost some important track time and inevitably hurt his Qualifying pace. However, he was still able to deliver a very strong performance - one of his best qualifying sessions of the season so far - and was only 70ms from P16, and close to Q2. His team worked very hard all day and were able to use the information gathered by George to help give him a strong car for qualifying.
George had a much more straightforward day, enjoying a strong and productive practice session, which allowed him to build momentum through qualifying. Each of his laps this afternoon was strong, and he was genuinely competing for places just outside of the top-10. Q3 was beyond us today, but nonetheless we were more competitive than usual and feel that we have adapted to the short format well.
Last weekend in Portugal George showed good pace on Sunday and we hope that he can continue that trend tomorrow. We undoubtedly have some strong race cars around us on the grid, but we had a good long run this morning and we believe that we can race hard and put up a strong fight.
George Russell: I am really pleased with that qualifying session. It was a proper thrill out there today, we need to come to more tracks like this because it is exhilarating for the driver, pushing the car right to the limit. After practice we weren't sure what others had done with their fuel loads, but we didn't look so promising and we didn't expect Q2, so to be in the position that we are in and to qualify P13 is great. Tomorrow we want to fight, go forwards and although it will be difficult, I will be getting my elbows out and doing my best.
Nicholas Latifi: We had a tricky practice session this morning that was very interrupted as I had a brake-by-wire issue on my qualifying simulation. We lost quite a lot of time unfortunately and we had to make some quite big decisions on where to go with the car without having many references. It wasn't ideal going into qualifying, but I was satisfied with my laps. I closed the gap from practice and was only a tenth and a half off making it into Q2 in qualifying, so I can be pleased with that. It is an amazing track to drive, I am looking forward to the race tomorrow and we will try and grab a good result.
Check out our Saturday gallery from Imola, here.