Qualy: Williams, Toro Rosso, Haas, Sauber

There was yet another disappointing qualifying session for Williams, as Pierre Gasly qualified 15th on debut.

Williams

Felipe Massa: “I’m a little bit disappointed not to be in Q3. I was happy with the car and the balance. I had a great Q1 but I didn’t have a perfect Q2, to be honest. On the first try I had a little bit of traffic on the high speed laps, which meant I lost a bit of time. And on the second try, the car was bouncing a bit on corner two so I lost a little bit of traction. All of these little problems were enough to lose position.”

Lance Stroll: “I think it was all right, and all in all it was a good effort from the team. It could have been a bit better in the first sector on my push lap, as on the out-lap the tyres were a bit cold, but overall it was a decent effort and at least we are in Q2. If it is wet tomorrow we would have a bit of an opportunity starting where we are starting, and so be able to capitalise on that. However, even in the dry it could be up to strategy and I think the rear tyres could be a big factor round here. It is always an interesting first corner here, so now we just have to concentrate on the job we have to do and try to get some points, and I do expect a long and hot race.”

Toro Rosso

Carlos Sainz: “I’m not surprised with ending up P14 today because it’s more or less where we’ve been all weekend… It’s for sure something we need to look into, because at the moment we’re a bit too far away from Q3. Before coming here we thought we’d be performing a bit better than what we have done up until now – the updates we’ve brought here aren’t really working as well as we expected, at least not for now. Having said that, it’s also true that we haven’t been able to do that many laps this weekend to properly learn about it all, so we just need to keep working hard. We usually come back a bit on race day, so hopefully we can be part of a good midfield battle and recover a bit of ground. If it rains, anything can happen as we saw in Singapore, so I welcome a wet race but, if not, we will just need to keep our heads down and see where we end up. Whatever happens, we will try and do our best, that’s for sure!”

Pierre Gasly: “I think today was positive and I’m happy – your first qualifying in Formula 1 is always a special moment and one I was really looking forward to! I tried to give my best and I think we made really good progress between FP3 and Qualifying. I felt comfortable in the car in Q1 and then, in Q2, I kept on learning while giving my all and I’d say we can be satisfied with the result! I now look forward to tomorrow, my first Formula 1 race and something I’ve been dreaming of since I was very young…! I expect it to be a really good experience and I hope to keep improving tomorrow as well. You never know what can happen with the weather here so, if the rain and tricky conditions do appear, I will welcome it as I felt confident in the wet in FP1 on Friday and I’m sure it will make it all even more exciting!”

Haas

Romain Grosjean: “It’s been pretty amazing what the team has been capable of doing after yesterday. It’s such a great team and it shows how much we’ve improved since the beginning. They managed to repair the car after curfew, but still in a quick amount of time. I’m very proud of them, and I was happy I was able to go out. Unfortunately, we went out in Q1. We’re working and we’re trying to analyse everything we can. We’re really doing our best, but these last few races we just haven’t had much performance. We know the supersoft is not our best compound, in general. We’re struggling to find the right window on tyres. We need to just keep working on that. We’re all in the same boat and working hard. It will pay off at one point. Tomorrow is a long race. It’ll be very hot. The weather can be tricky. Let’s try to get the best, as we did in Singapore, and hopefully score some points.”

Kevin Magnussen: “The feeling was not too bad. It’s just not competitive, I guess. It’s tough for us, but that’s how it is. The car isn’t slow. It’s been fast on other occasions, other races. We’re just not consistent enough in some areas. Something is making our performance vary too much. We’re working on it. The essential part is that we’ve designed a good baseline car. It’s just that sometimes it won’t work, and today was one of those days.”

Sauber

Pascal Wehrlein: “It was a decent qualifying – better than expected. It is positive that we were able to reduce the gap to our direct competition compared to the practice sessions. Now we look forward to the race and will see what’s possible tomorrow.”

Marcus Ericsson: “It has not been an easy day for us. Realistically, we knew that we could not expect much more in qualifying. We did manage to come a bit closer to our direct competition today which is positive. However, we still have a long way to go to make further progress. We are now analysing the data so that we can make another step in the right direction.”