Q1
F. Massa 1:09.789 (4th)
L. Stroll 1:10.776 (18th)
Q2
F. Massa 1:09.612 (7th)
Q3
F. Massa 1:09.841 (10th)
Qualifying Notes
– Felipe Massa qualified 10th and Lance Stroll 18th for the Brazilian Grand Prix
– A gearbox failure at the beginning of FP3 ruled Lance out of the session, limiting his amount of running on Saturday, and resulting in both a gearbox and power unit change ahead of qualifying
– Despite improving on each lap, Lance was knocked out in Q1
– Felipe was competitive throughout both Q1 and Q2 before traffic on his first flying lap in Q3 caused him to abort his lap, and he was unable to improve higher than 10th on his final run
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: Unfortunately, with Lance we had a gearbox failure at the start of FP3 which resulted in both a gearbox and power unit change. The team did a fantastic job to get the car ready and he was out fairly near the beginning, helped by the red flag after Hamilton crashed, which gave them a little bit more time to prepare the car. Lance managed two laps on the supersoft tyre but with limited running ahead of qualifying, he unfortunately wasn’t able to set a time quick enough to get out of Q1. On Felipe’s side, he had been showing good pace all weekend and he looked even stronger throughout qualifying. He easily made it into Q2 with the fourth quickest time of the Q1 session, and then only needed one run to get into Q3. So, for the first time in a while, we arrived into the final session with two new sets of supersoft tyres, which was a great job by Felipe. Unfortunately, he encountered traffic on his first run, and on the second lap a couple of small mistakes meant he wasn’t able to find those final few tenths to move higher than P10. Overall, it was a great qualifying from Felipe showing his skill around his home track., and we aim to move forward in the race with Lance to bring home some good points for the team tomorrow.
Felipe Massa: I was happy with qualifying until Q3 where I lost a lap because a driver disturbed me on purpose. That is really disappointing. I think if you make a mistake it’s ok but it wasn’t a mistake. I am really disappointed. It was raining a little bit on the last lap and I didn’t put it together. I was locking up and I’m not starting in the position that I should be.
Lance Stroll: It was a tricky day missing out on FP3 and not doing any running until qualifying, so it was always going to be hard. We got helped by the red flag, but I was starting from zero today. It was just very hard. The car felt good, but I just made too many mistakes trying to find the limit of the car on the couple of laps I had. It has been a difficult weekend up to now, but tomorrow is a new day. We will have a penalty for changing the gearbox, but we will take it from there.
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