22/07/2023
NEWS STORY
Fernando Alonso: "I was happy with the AMR23 today in Qualifying after we made some tweaks to the set-up from yesterday.
The average time for us to pole position has been four to five tenths [of a second] this season, so if you look at our result today, it was a normal Qualifying. The pack is so close, so a tenth here or there makes a huge difference in deciding the final positions. I think our performance is better than our result suggests. Looking ahead to the race we know it's difficult to overtake here, so I think it will be tough tomorrow. We will try to extract the maximum and target the top six positions to score as many points as possible."
Lance Stroll: "It was frustrating to have had my first Q2 lap deleted due to track limits at Turn 12; I was just pushing hard and it's difficult to know where the line is as you can't feel it. The new Qualifying format did make things slightly more challenging, but I don't mind that, and it's the same for all of the drivers. It's an incredibly tight pack with fine margins between all of the teams, so going into tomorrow we'll be looking to make the most of any opportunities that come our way."
Mike Krack, Team Principal: "We had the potential to be slightly higher up the grid today, but some of our competitors have closed the gap and have found some speed. You always get a tight grid here and those small margins made the difference. It is tomorrow that counts, and we are usually more competitive on Sundays. It will be interesting to see how the race plays out because tyre degradation is relatively high on this track, which could encourage a variety of strategies. As for the trial of the Qualifying format, I think it is important to explore different ideas, understand what they bring to the show, and give a new challenge to the teams."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.