07/12/2024
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "I'm very happy with today's Qualifying result.
"The team has worked extremely hard all weekend and we managed to improve our performance between Practice to Qualifying. I've not felt that comfortable in the car and we went into Qualifying not too sure on what we could achieve. We managed to qualify in front of George [Russell], who was on pole position last week, and we're just behind Max [Verstappen], the world champion, so that shows much we've progressed this season. Nico [Hülkenberg] is in front so the battle is definitely on and it will be intense until the end. Tomorrow is a different exercise. This track on high fuel tends to be tough on the tyres so we will do our homework tonight and aim to be in a position to stay with Nico in the race."
Jack Doohan: "Another day of experience under my belt in a Formula 1 weekend and my first Qualifying session in the car. I am of course not satisfied with the result, but it was a session of learning which we will debrief ahead of tomorrow's race. I felt comfortable in the car on my first run, and I believe we could have extracted more in the second run. We did not have the cleanest out lap with traffic management and positioning, which meant the tyres were not in the optimal window when starting the lap. However, it is something we can learn from to improve in the future. I am now focused on working hard to maximise the race tomorrow to help the team in retaining sixth in the standings."
Oliver Oakes, Team Principal: "That was an incredibly close Qualifying today and is testament to the current level of competitiveness up and down the Formula 1 grid. Pierre again put in a great lap and is well positioned for tomorrow's race in sixth place. We knew coming into Abu Dhabi it would be a learning weekend for Jack and he's shown promise and grown in confidence with each session. I know he probably wanted a little more out of it, but it's great learning for next year and I'm sure he can make progress in the race tomorrow. Some of our main competitors are starting ahead of us, which is credit to them. Haas and Nico [Hülkenberg] in particular have looked fast here all weekend so far. We know what our objective is, and we know we need to be at our best tomorrow to achieve that."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Yas Marina here.