Ricciardo continues Q3 run
Daniel Ricciardo again made it through to Q3 in a close fought qualifying session to end up in 8th place. Jean-Eric Vergne was less fortunate and narrowly missed the cut and qualified 12th.
Daniel Ricciardo, STR8-01, 1:44.439, 9th: “That was not an easy session and we had to work harder here to get to Q3 than we did in a few other races where we have managed it. I was a bit disappointed not to get a little bit more time out of my lap in Q3, with Jenson a couple of tenths ahead and it would have been nice to get that. So I think ninth is pretty good all things considered. As for the race, the guys who went out in Q2 might have a little bit of a tyre advantage, so let’s hope that doesn’t have too much influence tomorrow. We will race as hard as we can and hope to stay in the points.”
Jean-Eric Vergne, STR8-03, 1:44.588, 12th: “It was extremely close and it’s a shame I didn’t make it to Q3. On the positive side, we worked very well with the team to get a good car for qualifying and we missed out by the smallest margin, even though the car was responding well. But I think we can have a good car for the race. This is a tough track, with over 20 corners and getting each one of them right on a single lap is not so easy, from a driving point of view and also when it comes to setting up the car. I am still optimistic for tomorrow and I believe that starting twelfth, scoring points is a realistic target. It was very tight this evening and one tenth of a second could have made all the difference and I think there were a couple of places where I could have found that tenth, so it’s a bit frustrating, but that’s it and tomorrow will be better.”
James Key, Technical director: “This track and possibly some of the conditions are not really playing to our strengths. We brought many new aero bits here, which we spent a lot of time evaluating on Friday, so that we had less time to look at other aspects of our performance. The good news is that the aero parts are working very well, but we then had a lot of work to do overnight to prepare for FP3 to get the most out of the package. I think that, in the end, we succeeded: it’s extraordinarily close in the mid-field, while the top teams are some way ahead of the rest of us. We were fighting to be at the front of the middle group and we achieved that with Daniel. Once again, he did a great job to get into Q3, which we have come to expect from him now, when we have tricky weekends. Jev was less than two tenths behind him in Q2 and also did a good job. On Friday, our long run pace was better than on the shorter runs, so naturally we are looking forward to having a strong race tomorrow.”
