It was quite a tough, difficult day for me today. The car was very good this morning on prime tyres and I had a good feeling for it, so I was quite confident for us on our option tyre run - the medium - in FP3 to see how much that would bring us forward. For some reason though I struggled massively with the tyre, just like yesterday, and I completely lost the balance of the car. I went slower on the Medium, compared to anyone else, so that was a bit of a shocker. I managed to do two good laps but didn’t really have the confidence with the tyre. I made two little mistakes and this cost me a tenth or two. The team has done a great job again and another weekend without any technical problems so far, so we will see for the race now.

For me it was a good qualifying and another good day generally. I am a little bit closer to Timo than Australia and that is the best target I have for now. I think there is still a couple of tenths to find but overall a positive step. I think it will be a tough race tomorrow; today was just a few laps, whereas tomorrow is 56. The weather is still uncertain also, so I think it will be interesting for everyone. A good job by the team in the conditions.

It has been another encouraging day for us as we take the positives from what we have seen so far and motivation from the signs of even better things to come. Although the placings in qualifying haven’t changed, the developments that we added to the car yesterday have meant our overall gap to the leaders and our closest competitors ahead has reduced. Touch wood, we haven’t yet experienced a single car-stopping issue and this has enabled us to crack through our programme and make the same steady progression towards the race as we did in Melbourne. Qualifying revealed a real mix bag of strategies as far as the tyres are concerned and the race is likely to throw up just as many surprises. It’s not yet clear as to the starting strategy and tonight we’ll take some time to evaluate all the options for tomorrow.