A tough Qualifying for us today here in Suzuka. This circuit exposes our current limitations, and that was clear on track. Despite the Q1 exit, we have still been able to build mileage across the sessions, which is important for gathering data and understanding the car better. I always enjoy driving here, so tomorrow we will try to maximise everything and see what’s possible.

I had some energy management issues on the last run in Q1 and lost a couple of tenths there so will start the race tomorrow from the back. The goal for the race is to see the chequered flag and get over the finish line, so our focus remains on reliability until we sort out our current issues. We have a good idea of the areas we need to work on during the next couple of months and we know that’s not going to be an overnight fix and will take time.

We know that our performance is not where it needs to be right now and this was always going to be a challenging weekend. Nonetheless, both Lance and Fernando pushed hard in today’s Qualifying session as they each completed three runs in Q1. Although we could not progress to Q2, we have made some incremental improvements, and we are in better shape compared to Friday. The focus now is to complete a race distance and build on the reliability we have shown leading up to the race.