The team worked very hard last night going through all the data from yesterday and after my first FP3 run it was clear we’d made good progress. The car felt better balanced, particularly in the medium speed corners and it improved again throughout the session. By the time we went for the performance run we’d found a setup that was working pretty well, much closer to what we wanted to see so we went into quali feeling quite positive. Between FP3 and quali the track temps increased and when I went out for the first run in Q1 the car balance wasn’t there anymore. It had changed from the morning and I felt like I couldn’t really push. We’d opted for two runs on the mediums and my quickest lap on the first run was ok. We added a bit more front wing for the second run and I put in my quickest time on the final lap of run two, but there was definitely more to come if we’d had the same sort of balance we’d had in FP3. Despite that, the main target for the team was to finish ahead of our direct competitors and we clearly did that today.

FP3 started ok for me. We still had some understeer in sector two and there was too much front locking so we corrected that for run two. The real issue was still managing the front tyre warm up which is obviously critical in maximising performance, but throughout the session we kept working on it and by the performance run we were happier with where we were. In quali we went for two runs on the mediums, going out early in the session for three timed laps and the car felt pretty good. There was a bit more to come in sector one and we put more front wing on for the second run and on the first flying lap I nailed it. A mid-26 was about as good as we could have hoped for so I’m really pleased with how quali went. It’s another session where I’m building my experience and my confidence in the car so I’ll go into the race feeling really good.