So far this weekend it has not been the easiest, FP3 earlier today was more positive than qualifying but we were still off the pace and the hotter weather conditions didn’t help. Our balance was off and there isn’t much that you can do about it once you feel it out on track, that was similar to the situation with our grip, it was difficult to know whether to push the car or not. Pierre spun out which caused a yellow flag and that certainly didn’t help us as I had to abort the lap. Even if I had completed it, it still would have only put me around P3 or P4 which would still have been five or six tenths off pole. I don’t think that it will be easy out there tomorrow but we will analyse everything post quali to give us the best chance in the race tomorrow.

I am feeling bad, especially because the pace has been good throughout the week and then it was about putting it all together today. So, it is really frustrating that Qualifying has not gone the way I wanted. I am tired of it not going the way we want. We need to be able to put it all together and there was too much difference from lap one to lap two. I struggled with the balance quite a lot, it felt very different from my first push to my second. Something happened between those runs and we need to figure out what was different about the car, it could have been to do with a flap adjustment between the runs. I know there is something good to come from us, the first push actually felt pretty good, and it had consistently felt good with the car but I didn’t have that comfortable feeling in the car when it counted, on the last push. The gap to Max was small in Q1 and especially in these tight qualifying sessions we need to work to get the car in a more consistent window, that feels more reliable lap to lap. Tomorrow will be difficult, but I will do my best to make it up.

I’m really pleased to have made it through to Q3, it’s a great result and I’m very happy with how everything came together. I’ve never seen such a close Qualifying before, so it’s nice to be on the right side of it this time. We’ve had the pace over the last few races, but today it finally clicked and we managed to put it all together. The Team has done a fantastic job, especially everyone on my side of the garage who’ve been working incredibly hard. Tomorrow is when it really counts. It’s going to be a tough race with the field so tightly packed, and we’ll do our best to keep the competition behind us. The strategy remains quite open, we will work hard over night to put the plan together. My focus will be on getting a clean start and making the right decisions in the car.

It was a disappointing Saturday. Yesterday we were not in a good position, but overnight, we turned things around thanks to some right changes to the car setup. They paid off in Q1 and I felt another Q3 was possible. Sadly though, during my lap in Q2 I had a different feeling with the car; I just had understeer in high-speed and I felt like the tyres were not ready for Turn 1. It’s a shame because my Q1 lap could have been good enough for Q3. I don’t know what happened and how we could have gone backwards from there, as we nailed the traffic and usually we make progress besides being very consistent in tyre warm-up. We’ll review everything with the team tonight, but looking at tomorrow, we’re not really far off and as positives we have new tyres left, so with a good strategy I think we can aim for points.