It was an awesome qualifying session. I’m really happy. The car was not so easy to drive yesterday, but the team did an amazing job overnight to find some more performance. Everybody at the track and back at the factory worked hard to make some improvements and I could really feel the difference today. They gave me a really strong car and during the session the pace just got better and better. I actually made a small mistake on my final lap in Q3 so maybe I could have been even faster and ahead of Raikkonen. Even so, I’m really pleased with this result and excited for the race. We have strong race pace, good top speed and the potential is there for a very strong result.

Today hasn’t gone as I was hoping and that’s very disappointing. We have been very competitive all weekend, but we couldn’t achieve the result we wanted at the most important moment. I was quite satisfied in Q1 and our pace showed a lot of promise, but as the conditions changed we weren’t able to respond. We changed our tyre warm-up routine and I lost all my feeling with the car. Getting the tyres in the right window was difficult and I was unhappy with the balance: it’s something we will need to analyse tonight. Tomorrow’s race will be challenging, but our car has very good pace. I want to give my fans something to celebrate: all weekend I have received an incredible amount of support and today they deserved a lot more. I was happy to be able to speak to all of them at the start of the session and I hope we can give them a better result tomorrow.

It’s been another very strong Saturday with both drivers qualifying in the top ten. We’ve worked extremely hard this week to dial the cars into this circuit and the engineers and mechanics deserve huge credit for giving the drivers a competitive car. The updates we brought here have certainly made a difference and taken us another step forward in terms of outright pace. Esteban’s confidence continues to grow and he should be very proud of his performance today – getting ahead of a Red Bull and just two tenths shy of a Ferrari. Sergio showed great pace as well in Q1 and Q2, but his Q3 laps didn’t come together and he had to settle for P10. He’s received huge support from the local fans so far this week and he’s determined to reward them tomorrow with a strong drive.