Qualifying Notes
- Sergey Sirotkin qualified 17th and Lance Stroll 18th for the United States Grand Prix
- Both drivers qualified on the ultrasoft Pirelli tyre
- Sergey set a 1:36.300 on his first flying lap before pitting for fresh rubber, meanwhile Lance set two timed-laps before boxing for a new set of tyres
- Both drivers found time on their second runs, but it wasn’t enough to progress into Q2
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: Qualifying in 17th and 18th is not where we want to be, but I think the drivers both got the best they could from the car in what is quite a close field. A lot of today was about trying to get the best from the tyre through the whole lap and we had limited practice to get that right in FP3. All of our focus will now be on the race tomorrow to see if we can make progress from where we are.
Sergey Sirotkin: We should be happy with what we have, especially with the amount of running we did earlier today. I think we optimised our performance quite well, I know we’re not through to Q2 and we have to aim for higher performance, but we squeezed the maximum from what we have available. I think we should be fair with ourselves and take it as it comes.
Lance Stroll: It was the usual to be honest and kind of what we expected. I just missed a little bit on the last sector of my lap. Maybe I could have got Alonso, but I definitely couldn’t have scraped through to Q2 as those couple of tenths are so hard to get. It was very tight. The plan for tomorrow is a good start and take any opportunities on the first lap. I think we also gain a couple of places with some other cars having penalties, and so that will be helpful. We will see what we can do and hope to have a good race tomorrow.
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