2020 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – Qualifying "There's everything to play for tomorrow"
Imola, Saturday 31 October
Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris and Performance Director Andrea Stella after Qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
CARLOS SAINZ, #55
| FP3 | 1m16.560s (+1.834s) | 42 laps | 14th | |
| Q1 | 1m15.528s (Softs) | 12th | ||
| Q2 | 1m15.027s (Softs) | 9th | ||
| Q3 | 1m14.911s (Softs) | 10th |
“A bit of a difficult quali for us today. After a positive free practice session this morning, we hoped for a better result because the car was feeling good on track. However, we didn’t seem to be quite there in quali. My first run in Q1 was a bit compromised and I had to run two sets. From there it just felt like we were playing catch-up in the midfield. Having just one set for Q3 wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t enough to put ourselves higher in the order.
“We struggled more than expected and we need to analyse why. However, we still got both cars into Q3 and there’s everything to play for tomorrow. We’ll do our best to find some performance overnight and hopefully score good points after a strong race!”
Emilia Romagna Grand Prix Imola
LANDO NORRIS, #4
| FP3 | 1m16.671s (+1.945s) | 45 laps | 16th | |
| Q1 | 1m15.274s (Softs) | 6th | ||
| Q2 | 1m15.051s (Softs) | 10th | ||
| Q3 | 1m14.814s (Softs) | 9th |
“I want to say today was a good day – but it could’ve been a bit better. The car felt good, I think we made some good improvements from FP1 to qualifying. We were always quick but that last little bit of performance was difficult to extract from the car in Q3. I did a good first sector on my first run and then a much better final sector on my second run, but I just didn’t put it together.
“The car was quick, with the potential to be maybe one position higher, but not much more. I think the cars ahead of us were just quicker. We couldn’t have gone three tenths quicker like they both did. I’m happy overall, but a bit of a shame we couldn’t be that little bit higher.”
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ANDREA STELLA, Performance Director
“It was an interesting day and a tight battle at this iconic Formula 1 venue. Today, we had enough pace to make it through to Q3 but, at the same time, when we look at the classification, we see there were some quick cars, and we could do no better than P9 and P10. However, we’re still in the fight for good points tomorrow.
“We gathered useful tyre information this morning in practice and we’re not expecting any surprises from the weather. The goal, as always, is to do our best and score as many points as possible.”
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