20/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Esteban Ocon: "In this morning's Sprint race, I had fun and some good overtakes.
"Unfortunately, we didn't have the pace for more, nonetheless it was a decent race considering also that I have the old spec car this weekend. The car was a bit trickier to drive this afternoon. However, on a positive side, we can see that the upgrades brought here this weekend seem to be working and came alive in this Qualifying session and that is positive going forward. On my side, the car was also more competitive than what we've seen and finishing in 13th position is a step up considering that cars around me had upgrades. We start the race in front of some of the cars we were battling with in the Sprint race earlier today, so we'll hope for a good race start and a good strategy for tomorrow's race."
Pierre Gasly: "I'm very happy with our performance today. It has been a while since we reached Q3, and we achieved the equal best Qualifying result of the season. The car was very enjoyable to drive today. We made some changes after the Sprint race this morning and although we are still exploring this new package, we look to be finding the right direction with it and have good potential going forward. We also have some indication on our race potential from today's Sprint race. We're starting from seventh on the grid for tomorrow's race and we aim to capitalise and score some points, as it's been a while since we've been in the top ten. It would be a nice reward for the team after bringing this package to the car this weekend."
Oliver Oakes, Team Principal: "The team did a great job today to improve the car and find performance between sessions. Particularly trying to extract the most from the new parts we brought to the track this weekend, which is never easy during a Sprint weekend with limited running. We weren't as competitive in the Sprint in the morning, we showed much better pace over a single lap this afternoon. Pierre did a really good job to progress to the final part of Qualifying, and Esteban also narrowly missed out on Q3. Our joint best Qualifying result of the season, which is credit to all the hard work that's been going on at the factory. We must try to carry this over into the Grand Prix tomorrow."