I don’t think our pace has been too bad today and it was a shame as we should have finished on the front row. For sure we could have done better and we would have liked to have had a better qualifying but it was a bit too difficult to get the car together and be consistent with it. Ultimately, it’s been difficult this weekend to get the balance of the car right and we would have like to have had a better qualifying. Q1 and Q2 weren’t bad but on in Q3 on my final lap on the last corner we messed up and this mistake cost us P2 unfortunately. The result is not bad considering the issues we were facing, but it has been quite up and down this weekend. The McLarens and Ferraris were looking quite quick and I hope I can do some overtaking tomorrow and try and make up some positions. I hope that we can have a good race and fight for a podium; that would be a good end to the season.

I think going into Q3 with a single new set of tyres cost us. We lost a set in Q1 when they took my first lap away and then told us too late it was reinstated, when I was already out on a new tyre. It was unfortunate and compromised that session. Over one lap we have been suffering and once again, we had this really disconnected balance, which is an issue we have been suffering with for some time. It we want to get more front end, we seem to lose from the rear and we are always chasing that balance a bit too much. Qualifying has been the trickiest part of my season and it didn’t get any better today. The main focus is to have a strong race tomorrow and I think we can race from where we are starting. We have good race pace but it is going to be hard on the rears for sure, the degradation is likely to be bad, so it will be an interesting one.

It was a bit of a difficult qualifying for us. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get through to Q3, but as a driver, you always want to go beyond expectations. My lap was okay, even if there’s always some room for improvement, but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough today. Our main competitors seem very strong, but anything can happen and we’re not giving up, so we’ll do our best to recover positions during the race.

Probably one of the closest qualifying sessions I’ve experienced, every little hundredth makes a difference. We extracted everything we could have out of the car today; when you have two cars together like that, it usually means you’ve extracted the most out of it. A perfect lap could maybe have got us into Q3, but we just didn’t quite have the speed for Alpine and Haas, which is frustrating, but we’ll try and make something work tomorrow.