30/11/2024
NEWS STORY
Fernando Alonso: "I am happy we made it into Q3 in tonight's Qualifying session and the car felt better than any other session of the weekend.
"We couldn't make any progress in the Sprint but we made some set-up changes after this and it all seems to be working as expected. The team did a good job with this and also managing all of the traffic during a busy Qualifying session. It's a good starting position tomorrow and it's hard to overtake here, so hopefully we can translate this performance into the race."
Lance Stroll: "I had a big snap at Turn 1 on my final Q2 lap and lost about half a second. I don't think the tyres were in quite the right window at the start of the lap because the grip just wasn't there for me, so that was the end of my hopes of progressing to Q3. In hindsight, we should have done a much harder out lap. The car was feeling more competitive in Qualifying after a few set-up changes after the Sprint, so although it was tight out there, I think more was possible. The race is usually tougher for us given our car is quite hard on tyres, but we'll see how we go tomorrow."
Mike Krack, Team Principal: "We have been a little more competitive in Qatar and I think Fernando's P8 in Qualifying represents the maximum that we could expect. The lap was clean and tidy, and it gives us a good opportunity to compete for points tomorrow. The AMR24 has not been easy to drive, though, and it has been on a knife edge with both drivers having big snaps of oversteer. That impacted Lance's Q2 session. Let's see what tomorrow brings. The Sprint showed that it is difficult to overtake here - especially with the shorter DRS zone - and managing the tyres won't be easy. We will keep pushing to progress with both cars."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Qatar here.