It was a tough day for the team. Not only did we have the Friday washout affecting all the teams, but we were without Lance and that limited what we could learn this morning in practice. I definitely think there was more on the table in qualifying because we didn’t have another set of softs for Q3 to make a second run. But the positive is that we secured a top 10 starting position for the race tomorrow. It’s going to be a race of unknowns, so if we have some good luck at the start – we can still aim for a strong result. I also hope Lance feels better and we have him back in the team soon. Nico did an excellent job in jumping into the car without any practice and getting familiar with the car and team again in a short amount of time.

Well, that was one for the storybooks! It’s certainly been an interesting Formula 1 season. I got the call from Otmar at 11am: I was sitting with a friend having a coffee! I then ran to the car and got here as quickly as I could! I did the required COVID testing and I probably had around 40 minutes with the engineers before jumping into the car for qualifying. Obviously, the result wasn’t amazing, but I had fun and I learned a lot of useful information. I know the track, but it’s been a while since Formula 1 has raced here – and the RP20 has evolved a lot since I drove it at Silverstone too. I had to go out there and learn the car, feel the grip levels, and then find the limit as quickly as I could. To do all that in just a few laps is a big ask, but it’s good experience for the Grand Prix. We’ll let all of that sink in and come back tomorrow, go racing and give my best in this very unexpected home race!

It’s been an incredibly busy and challenging day. Lance was taken unwell this morning and we took the decision not to run him for the rest of the weekend. He’s under the weather, but not showing symptoms to suggest COVID-19, but it was sensible to give him time to recover to full health so he can be ready for the next double-header in Portugal and Imola. Fortunately, Nico was in nearby Cologne and was able to easily step in for Lance. He was the logical choice given that he drove for us at the Silverstone races. He was always going to face a mammoth task to progress beyond Q1 because his first laps back in the car were during qualifying. With Checo, we had a pretty routine session, progressing to Q3, and ended the session P9. With such limited running for all the teams, there is little data, and so it will be a bit of a step into the unknown tomorrow. I’m confident we can still score some good points.