It’s been an incredible qualifying for us even though the weekend has been quite tough so far. We kept working and the changes that we made going into qualifying helped as we were lacking a bit of pace before. The car got a little better and we could attack the corners a bit more. During qualifying we kept trying to find little gains and drive to the limit meaning that we improved nicely, which made the difference today. Every lap that we did we built on and learned from. We maximised what we had, didn’t make any mistakes in the lap and it was a great result in the end. Pole was a surprise for everyone as so far this year we have not been the best on race pace, so I am very happy for the Team. Tomorrow the rain might make it a bit more of an interesting race and we will do our best to get the best possible result.

There’s some frustration today. I think the warmup didn’t go as I wanted for that final lap and it was pretty messy, especially in the first sector. We are still learning, and I thought the warmup was ok and we would maybe be a little compromised, but the penalty was pretty big. I thought we would be able to build from Q1 but that wasn’t the case. At least my confidence in the car feels good now, I just wasn’t able to put it together today and that is a shame. I think the positive is I have started to understand the car well. FP1 and FP3 felt good and I started well today, it was just that final lap, the car is quite sensitive on its tyres, and I started to feel that in Q2, the pace was there to get to Q3 and I need to be able to maximise it. My mindset all weekend has been to just enjoy the situation, the car, the Team, being at Suzuka, and I felt more calm than usual but at the same time I felt responsible to perform.  It’s my home grand prix, so I will stay focussed tomorrow and try my best, a bit of rain could help us move through the field.

Yesterday we had a great start to the weekend as I felt comfortable straight away in the car with quite a lot of pace. I wasn’t too happy this morning during FP3, but the team did a fantastic job making the right adjustments to the car, even throughout the session. In the afternoon during Q1, unfortunately, I felt some discomfort in the cockpit due to an issue with the seat belt, but at the end of that session, I jumped out of the car and the team were able to fix it, allowing me to have a smooth Q2 and Q3. This definitely helped me a lot as I was able to be fully focused on my driving. Overall, I’m really happy about my performance and lap time until the last chicane, as sadly, I lost one tenth there. Tomorrow might be raining, so in this case, obviously, it would be a very different situation compared to today, especially starting in P7 with the big boys ahead of me. It will be a challenge, but it’s a good place to kick off the race from, and if we have a clean start, I think points may be on the table.

It’s been a tricky day, especially after yesterday we had pretty good pace, and good balance. Somewhere along the way, I think with the wind change, we struggled more. It’s a shame because the potential of the car has been very very good this weekend, I felt really good in the car but for whatever reason it got away from us at the end of Q2. You’re always chasing balance through Quali as the track evolves, everybody’s getting faster, so you’re chasing a balance to try and keep in a good window. I feel like we were fine tuning through the run but it just got to a point that we couldn’t really tune it much more, we kind of hit a wall a bit. Tomorrow looks like it’s probably going to be wet, which is going to be a challenge for everybody, but also it opens opportunities for us to try and move forward. The new surface will be quite different to drive, it’ll probably hold a bit more water. Let’s see what happens, I’m sure it’ll be an eventful race.