Yuki Tsunoda #22
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:14.420, pos. 18th, 22 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:12.985, pos. 17th

“We’ve been struggling with pace this weekend and tried multiple things to try and improve, and in the end, I felt better in qualifying than in Free Practice. At least I’m happy with my lap and feel like I was able to maximise the current package. The last races have been going well and even if it’s a shame, I think it’s important that we’re facing this more difficult moment together as a team. It’s a good opportunity to learn from our struggles and grow as a team. The most important thing is to remain positive, and we certainly will.”

Daniel Ricciardo #3
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:14.161, pos. 16th, 17 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:13.075, pos. 18th

“It’s a tricky weekend. We have a lot of new parts on the car, and we still need to understand the best way to make them work. After yesterday, when we were still finding a bit of balance, we made pretty big changes overnight and today in qualifying the car felt much more together. We made progress in terms of feeling and balance, but unfortunately, we’re still in a tough spot in terms of the stopwatch. Being out of Q1 with both cars, especially using three sets of soft each, shows that at the moment, we don’t have the pace. There’s still more to find and we’ll keep chipping away. Tomorrow is going to come around quick, but we have a few races ahead of us with similar track characteristics, so we obviously need to figure out together the things we’re missing.”

Jody Egginton (Technical Director)

“It’s fair to say that despite the hard work by everyone and changes made overnight, combined with initial feedback on the updates highlighting that on a macro level they have broadly met expectations, we have not been able to extract enough from the car so far here in Barcelona. With the midfield battle being so close, it’s very easy to go to the back of the group if you are struggling, which is what we have unfortunately seen today. In terms of car balance, there has been some improvement. This alone has not been enough, so clearly, we have a lot of homework to do tonight, but also ahead of Austria, to extract more from the car and a large part of this work will be analysing in detail the aero data we have gathered here in Barcelona. On the flip side, both drivers have done a good job of supporting the engineering team with feedback on the numerous test items we have evaluated here and also extracting the maximum from the cars we have been able to provide them with, so we have plenty of data to work with to make the necessary steps forward.”