Once again today, ambient and track temperatures were very high, although slightly lower than yesterday. This afternoon, three of our cars made it into Q3 and the Red Bull Racing Honda cars will both line up on the second row of the grid. However, with the two Mercedes ahead of us, this qualifying result is less than ideal. For Scuderia AlphaTauri, Pierre produced a fantastic performance to qualify fifth, which is a good comeback after the disappointment of Silverstone. Unfortunately, Yuki did not manage to put it all together and will start from 16th tomorrow. A short track length means that the drivers face a tough 70 laps tomorrow, but hopefully all four Honda drivers can move up the order, even if overtaking is difficult here.

The whole weekend so far we have been a bit behind and qualifying was the same. I went a bit backwards on my Q3 lap compared to Q2 and I just didn’t have the same grip for some reason. I don’t know if it was track or tyre related but the balance was a bit off to push everywhere and around here the corners all follow really quickly so if you don’t feel good in one corner, the next one won’t be great either. I lost a bit of lap time on the final run but even with a faster out lap and a slightly better balance I don’t think we would have been on pole. P3 isn’t where we want to be and we cannot be happy with that but nevertheless, we are still up there with Checo next to me so we will see what we can do in the race. We will also find out if starting on the soft is a good strategy as it’s going to be really hot. The softer tyre won’t last as long as the medium but maybe it will help us off the line. The start around here is very important so we will give it a good go and fight to get the best out of the race.

I certainly felt that I was making good progress throughout qualifying with the car. It was a real shame to lose that final lap because I felt that it had good potential. At the time we thought we had plenty of margin to work with, unfortunately that wasn’t the case and it meant that I basically lost my final attempt. We knew Mercedes were going to be very strong today but I really hope tomorrow we are able to put a lot of pressure onto them. We have a different strategy and are looking forward to the start, this is a place where if you get one or two corners right there is plenty of lap time to be found. In an ideal scenario we will get ahead of them and hold position but the race is very long and anything can happen.

I’m extremely happy with today, it’s a pretty good feeling to be the first car behind Mercedes and Red Bull. We were quite surprised to be ahead of Ferrari, who have been looking really strong, so I’m really pleased with our performance today. It’s not going to be an easy race for us, we know that in terms of race pace some of the cars around us are stronger, but we knew grid positioning would be really important and we’ve put ourselves in the best possible place to fight tomorrow. I’m really excited for the battle with Charles and Lando, we know it’s hard to overtake here so we’re going to keep our elbows out and try and hold on to fifth position.

This whole weekend I’ve struggled with the balance of the car, so it’s been quite difficult. We maximised track time in FP3, to make up for the time that I lost yesterday. I felt that I built up the pace well and was able to put together a good lap. I went into Qualifying with confidence and I think my lap was also good, even if I felt I was still lacking grip. I don’t quite understand how I lost that much time to my teammate, so I will need to sit with my engineers tonight and look at the data ahead of the race. I really like this circuit, having driven here the last few years, so it’s frustrating to not be starting further up the grid tomorrow.