01/04/2023
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "Qualifying was good, we built the pace well throughout and maximised the performance. Q1 was ok and we ended up in P15, but we were able to take another step each lap. For Q2, we had planned to do two push laps, but unfortunately, the weighbridge stopped me from completing my second lap. Considering I only had one flying lap, I'm pleased with it and the increase in performance by my team. I'm looking forward to the race tomorrow, we haven't done any long-run testing, but we will aim to extract the maximum out of the car to be able to score points."
Nyck de Vries: "It's been a positive session and it's nice to get into Q2, especially with the new upgrades we brought this weekend. The changing conditions were quite tricky, in particular for the tyre warm-up, and in the last run in Q2, we didn't adapt enough to what needed to be done. In practice, the tyres continued to improve, but as the track evolved, there was a little drop-off where you needed to make sure the tyres were ready for the last lap. I am a little gutted because we didn't optimise the last run, but overall, it was a happy session. For tomorrow, we didn't get much of an opportunity to test our long runs, but I am looking forward to racing and hopefully scoring points."
Jody Egginton (Technical Director): "There is still a lot of work to improve the car, but we can see that the floor update we brought to this event has delivered a step in aero performance broadly in line with our expectations. This is definitely positive, as it represents the first step of the rolling aero development programme and forms a good basis to progress. Although we didn't have the pace for Q3 today, Yuki put together a good qualifying, finishing in P12 and not leaving much on the table. Nyck also had a solid qualifying session but did not quite manage to put together his best sector one, meaning he ended Q2 in P15. In summary, there were positive signs, but there's a long way to go to get the car established in the midfield. Our focus now switches to the race, but it's clear that we'll need to be ready to take advantage of any potential opportunities that may occur to get our cars moving forward as quickly as possible."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Melbourne here.