03/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: We made some large changes overnight to both cars and managed to progress the setup. Fortunately, we were able to complete a few laps during the early part of FP3 to confirm the balance.
Logan went through the gravel at T14 just as the first spots of rain started falling and this did a lot of damage to his car, requiring another stellar effort from the team to get his car ready for qualifying. Meanwhile, Alex had a quick look at the intermediate tyre and was comfortable with his car.
Conditions were tricky at the start of qualifying, but this was an opportunity for us to make some progress and in a clean session Alex was capable of making Q2. This would have been an excellent result but an early trip to the gravel at T5 damaged the floor of his car and he carried an aerodynamic penalty through the rest of qualifying.
Logan had a compressed Q1 session following the repairs to his car. He had a tricky final outlap negotiating the traffic whilst preparing his tyres and couldn't put a representative lap together.
There may be further rain around tomorrow afternoon and so we'll look to take advantage of that.
Alex Albon: I really like the conditions we drove in qualifying, I normally tend to do well in them, but I just got caught out on my first lap and the damage affected the rest of the session, which is a bit of a shame, but we've got some pace. I feel like we've used this weekend as a bit more of a test session because of us being a bit more off the pace than normal. I think we've focused a little more on the Sunday car which should hopefully put us in a good place tomorrow.
Logan Sargeant: Firstly, grateful to the team for turning the car around for qualifying. The first lap back out wasn't too bad. Everyone wants to get in front starting the last lap, and I had a comprised outlap with the tyres a bit out of the window for that last push, which was frustrating. I'm disappointed but I put us on the back foot earlier on today. Tomorrow's going to be tricky, but we'll see what we can do.