I am very pleased with today’s result, especially given how difficult the last couple of weekends have been for me in qualifying. It was a good fight to get into Q3 because our rivals were pushing us really hard, but I managed a good lap in difficult conditions to be sixth – the maximum we could hope for today. I have to say ‘thank you’ to the team: we went through everything to understand how the latest upgrades on the car work because I seemed to struggle a bit in qualifying at the last few races. The engineers have worked so hard and today’s result proves our pace. I am pleased to be back on form and I am looking forward to the race. It was quite cold today and we expect a much warmer track in the race, so managing the tyres and being on the right strategy will be especially important. Perhaps there could be some rain too – you never know in Brazil, which could help us have a nice battle at the front.

It was not a perfect session and I just missed out on making Q3. The margins are always tight here and a few hundredths would have made the difference. For whatever reason we didn’t make our usual step between Friday and Saturday, and that’s one of the reasons we were not as strong as we should have been. I was also struggling with putting all the sectors together over one lap because I was gaining time in sector one, but losing grip in sector two. It feels as though we just didn’t get the most from the tyres when it mattered in Q2. On the positive side, I will move up a place on the grid with Daniel’s grid penalty and I have a free choice of tyres for the race.

Another fantastic job by the entire team today and it’s very rewarding to see Sergio so happy after the qualifying session. Everybody continues to put in a huge effort to maintain our competitiveness and to be starting from fifth and tenth places on the grid gives us a great opportunity to do well tomorrow. Esteban was disappointed not to get more from the session, but the long run pace should allow him to race well tomorrow. The weather looks brighter for the race and we will do our best to convert these qualifying positions into a strong result on Sunday.