18/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: There is always a lot of pressure on the Friday of a Sprint weekend.
With only having one Free Practice you need to have the car in the right window straightaway. Both drivers were reasonably happy after Free Practice and confident to get into SQ2. Unfortunately, Alex made a mistake in his last push lap in SQ1 taking a bit too much kerb and could not avoid spinning. Franco passed into SQ2 with a good lap and went through into SQ3 with his only push lap. In SQ3 he made a mistake and had to settle for P10 in the end. A great performance at a new track with only one Free Practice session. We have one car in a good position to fight for points and with the other one we will focus on fine tuning the setup for Qualifying and the race on Sunday.
Franco Colapinto: It was a good Sprint Qualifying session, but I'm frustrated with myself as we were in a good place to beat the cars around us, but I made a mistake in Turn 1 which cost me. I tried to recover the time, but it wasn't enough. Sadly, it wasn't a clean lap in Q3, and it felt like we should've been in the top eight. I need to learn from this and continue to understand the limit of the tyres. However, after having only an hour to learn the track with this car, I made some good progress but felt like there was more there. We are starting close to the points tomorrow so let's see what we can do.
Alex Albon: It was my mistake today; I should've been able to avoid that kerb, however we went for a bit of a stiffer car in Sprint Qualifying compared to FP1, so I just found it a bit too stiff from one session to the next. The car would've got us into SQ2 so I don't think we need to make too many changes, it's more about the tyres which are flat-spotted and can't be used for the race tomorrow. We'll have to see what we can do with the race run now as it feels slightly compromised.