29/10/2022
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "It's a bit of a shame that we didn't make it through to Q3 today. If you look at the pace in the practice sessions it was really strong, so I think we should've been up there. The track position on our final push lap in Q2 wasn't great, which meant I couldn't get the car up to temperature and it compromised the lap. We need to make the most of any opportunity we can tomorrow and look towards the points."
Pierre Gasly: "We started the weekend really well yesterday, but since FP3 we've started to struggle a lot, sliding all over the place. Normally we're able to find solutions ahead of Quali, but we haven't been able to this time. I was pretty happy with my final lap this afternoon, but unfortunately the pace just wasn't there. We'll need to try something tomorrow, it's a tricky track here and our long-run pace is looking stronger, so for sure there's an opportunity in the race to make our way forward."
Claudio Balestri (Chief Engineer - Vehicle Performance): "Yesterday the FP2 session was dedicated to tyre testing, for this reason we decided to complete some runs this morning to better understand the tyre degradation on the current compounds, whilst at the same time we have tried to optimise our cars for Qualifying. On Yuki's car we showed a good level of performance, however on Pierre's we found more difficulties and it wasn't an easy session for that side of the garage. Before Quali we tried to optimise our performance, with the usual fine tuning on the setup on Yuki's car, whereas on Pierre's we decided to replace some parts and we also tried a different strategy to optimise the tyre preparation. We were able to get through to Q2 with both cars without any particular issue, but then in the next session we didn't have the level of performance to enter the top 10, with both Yuki and Pierre completing similar lap times to qualify respectively in P13 and P14. Now we focus the attention on the race. We know in Mexico that altitude is a real challenge for all the car's systems, so tomorrow we will try to do our best to maximise the possibilities available to get some points."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Mexico City here.