Yuki Tsunoda #22
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:29.572, pos. 13^th, 18 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:28.988, (Q2) 1:28.564, (Q3) 1:28.547, pos. 9^th

“We did it! I’m very happy today. The team did a fantastic job of giving me a nice car, and I enjoyed it, so a huge thanks to everyone. We were expecting it to be difficult, but I focused on myself to extract as much performance from the car as possible, and I’m pleased I was able to put it all together. It’s the first Q3 of the year and it’s given us extra confidence for the future. I enjoyed today a lot, but tomorrow won’t be easy, so we now focus on the race. We have a lot of experienced people, and I’m confident we can maximise our package and score some points.”

Daniel Ricciardo #3
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:29.740, pos. 16^th, 15 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:29.065, (Q2) 1:29.025, pos. 14^th

“It was a very frustrating qualifying. Compared to Bahrain, where I was more frustrated with myself because I knew there was more time on the table, today was a little bit more of a mystery. I know where the time was, but I don’t know how we could’ve got it in that session. I was confident going into qualifying, and I was feeling quite good in the car, but on the second run, I made a mistake. Nonetheless, we were still in the fight. Once in Q2, everyone was improving their lap time, but I felt like I couldn’t get any more out of what I had, and we just plateaued. It wasn’t a matter of understeer or oversteer, but more that I didn’t have the grip compared to the others. Well done to Yuki, he did a great job! Thinking of tomorrow, I have a few areas in mind to analyse, so we’ll look into them and hopefully, we’ll find more performance for the race.”

Guillaume Dezoteux (Head of Vehicle Performance)

“We had a busy Thursday evening, analysing the telemetry data and testing setup changes in the simulator. We knew the midfield would be very tight, and the qualifying result could be very different between achieving or not achieving a good car balance and getting a clean lap. Both cars started the third Free Practice on a medium tyre with the objective of confirming the setup changes done overnight, but the track conditions were a bit different. Then, we rather concentrated on the soft tyre towards the end of the session to assess the behaviour of our cars.

“The qualifying session went very well for Yuki, who managed to get to Q3 and secure P9 ahead of Stroll. The car felt consistent during the entire session, and our plan of focusing on single laps, getting good traffic windows and adapting the balance to the track evolution worked very well. Daniel made it through to Q2 with some margin but unfortunately couldn’t progress to Q3. It appeared more difficult for him to put the lap together, and some corners – like Turn 4 – were difficult, which is something we need to understand better.

“Tonight, we will work on the strategy simulations to define the most likely scenarios for the race. The cars directly ahead of us are slightly faster, but we know Jeddah can offer eventful races, and our target is to score the first points of the season here.”