“I’m happy with sixth position on the grid on Sunday after we lost a bit of performance today with the DRS problem”. This is how Fernando Alonso presented himself at the end of the qualifying session of the Azerbaijan F1 GP.
He The Asturian pilot suffered intermittent problems with his DRS in qualifyingthat opened up between turns 2 and 3, but not on the main straight, depriving him of a higher top speed, depriving him of valuable time that could put him well in the fight to be at least in the Top-4 of the starting grid on Sunday.
However, the Asturian, far from regret, is optimistic for the rest of the Grand Prix. He is now focused on the ‘qualy shoot-out’ and the sprint race this Saturday and in a race on Sunday where the good performance of his car could allow him to achieve a good comeback.
“We have a long weekend ahead of us and a lot of opportunities in this new format, so hopefully we can gain some positions and perform well in tomorrow’s sprint race.” declared the Spanish pilot.
“It was very close between some teams, so we have to try to be more consistent throughout the weekend. It’s good to know that we will wake up tomorrow and go straight to the car for another qualifying session,” he added. , eager to get back into his Aston Martin AMR23 in classification for the sprint appointment (Saturday, 10:30 am), which will command the grid for Saturday’s short race.
Walk: “DRS problem needs more time”
“Unfortunately, we had intermittent DRS issues throughout the session and eventually lost DRS in the pit lane in Q3. It took us a bit longer, but we will do our best to resolve the issue before tomorrow’s race.” said Lance Mamasyal, Alonso’s teammate at Aston Martin.
Krack: “We had the potential to go a little higher”
Mike Krack, Team Managerhe was satisfied with the performance of his drivers who had to deal with the DRS problem in qualifying.
“Fernando and Lance did a great job under today’s challenging conditions. The only free training session is pretty easy, but Going into qualifying, we experienced persistent problems with the DRS in both cars, which meant it worked intermittently.”Krack said.
“Although it cost us some performance, we progressed through Q3 quite comfortably and the team and drivers did a great job managing a busy session with yellow and red flags.. We had the potential to be further away on the grid, but I think we are well placed to fight for the points on Sunday and it is a circuit where overtaking is possible. Our focus now goes to Saturday and maximizing the standalone Sprint event to score as many points as we can,” concluded the Aston Martin Team Principal.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
