31/08/2024
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo: "I'm quite happy with the lap today, I didn't feel like we left much on the table.
"I knew after this morning it'd be tricky to get into Q3, so to get quite close to it in the end was good. Ultimately, I'm pleased with the lap and felt like we did all we could. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite enough, but the field is really close. There's a whole mix of cars from P8 to P20 realistically, and the fight for points will be on tomorrow. No one's used the Hard yet so that's unknown for the race. We're close enough and if you do have pace, you can overtake here. I'm looking forward to making up places tomorrow."
Yuki Tsunoda: "It was tough today. Yesterday we started pretty far off the pace, and then session by session we managed to close the gap towards the midfield, but unfortunately, it's clearly not enough. I'm frustrated, there are some things unclear, so we need to understand what's going on, as throughout the weekend we don't have an easy car to drive. I'm pretty happy with the lap I did in qualifying, but I think we're still missing something, as generally this weekend I'm feeling a lack of pace. There are differences across the cars, so surely there are a lot of things to learn. I'll do my best tomorrow."
Claudio Balestri (Chief Engineer - Vehicle Performance): "Yesterday we were not completely satisfied with our level of performance, especially on Yuki's car, which carried some new parts. We made some changes overnight on both sides of the garage, to get the maximum out of our cars on this challenging track, with some tuning on the level of downforce. This morning during FP3, we tested both cars with low fuel load on Soft tyres and we found some positives from the changes applied. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough, with Yuki out in Q1 and Daniel only being a few hundredths away from Q3. Now we need switch our focus on to the race, where we will aim to get some points."