Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying Report
It’s back-to-back race weekends and today we saw the Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying take place with Rosberg on pole position followed by his team-mate, Hamilton.
Let’s take a look and see what drivers (and teams) had to say after the Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying session.
Mercedes – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Nico Rosberg – 1st
1:30.647
“I’ve been feeling great all weekend and have felt incredibly comfortable in the car too. It gave me the confidence to push even harder at the end of Q3 which meant that I pulled out a great lap to recover pole from Lewis.”
“Suzuka is a really difficult circuit because of the varying corners – it’s great to start from P1 but as we’ve realised, it’s not the most important thing this year – you need to get the start and the race strategy right.”
“Lewis is going to push hard, that’s for sure and so will the Ferrari’s and Red Bulls’ and it’s clear that they both looked very strong on high fuel – it’s going to be an exciting race tomorrow.”
Lewis Hamilton – 2nd
1:30.660
“This weekend has not been that easy – I’ve been veering one way with the setup of the car and then had to shuffle back going into qualifying and it felt like I was in no-mans-land as we approached in Q1.”
“With all that in mind, I’m extremely happy that I was able to bring it back to that kind of gap – of course, starting on pole is always a good thing but let’s hope the work we’ve been doing starts paying off.”
“It’s also still hard to know at this stage what the weather is going to do but I’ll do the best I can tomorrow.”
Toto Wolff – Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“What an incredibly close qualifying – it was just 13 thousandths between our drivers after their final laps!”
“Nico has looked strong all weekend but didn’t put the lap together in the first run of Q3. As for Lewis, he has been a fraction behind Nico in most sessions so it was a fantastic performance to make such a fight of it in Q3 and to come so close to pole.”
“The gaps are getting smaller at the end of the season and like we expected bot Red Bull’s will be close as will be Kimi starting from P3 – their long runs were extremely competitive yesterday so it will be a tough race and important to take any opportunities. The weather could play it’s pat so we will need to execute our race plan perfectly.”
Ferrari – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Kimi Raikkonen – 3rd
1:30.949
“Overall the car has been behaving quite good – we had suffered from some understeer but have slowly been getting better with the setup and the speed.”
“I’m surprised how competitive and close we are to the Mercedes – third position is not too bad but obviously we want to be higher up.”
“This is what we got now and it’s a pi that Seb has a penalty because the team had quite a strong session today.”
“Usually we are better in the race but we will wait and see – it depends on the conditions and other stuff but we’ll do our best.”
Sebastisn Vettel – 4th (3 place grid penalty)
1:31.028
“It has been a great result so far for us as a team, as for myself – I messed up in Q3 with the last sector and lost a bit too much time.”
“All in all, it has been a very good qualifying session, our car has been handling well all through the sessions and it’s satisfying to be in front of the Red Bull’s.”
“For sure, tomorrow I’ll be starting further back because of the grid penalty but this is what it is and we have to take it – even so, I think the speed will help us to come back and then we’ll see what we can do. “
“I think it’s going to be a close fight, it will all depends on the strategy, how people handle their tyres and we develop from there.”
Red Bull Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Max Verstappen – 5th (will start in P4)
1:31.178
“Not such a bad result in qualifying but think the whole team expected a lot better. We wanted to be in front of the Ferrari’s but the car balance wasn’t quite there.”
“Starting fourth on the grid tomorrow gives us a chance of a good result so we can still be positive.”
“We will all sit down and work through this evening to make sure that we are as prepared as possible for the race tomorrow.”
Daniel Ricciardo – 6th (will start in P5)
1:31.240
“To be honest I was hoping for a bit more from qualifying – we knew it was going to be close with Ferrari and we were hoping to get in front of them but they had good pace today.”
“I’m happy with our long run race pace and should have a similar pace to Ferrari as we expect them to be our real rivals in the race.”
“We’ll gain a position through Seb’s penalty tomorrow and starting in P5 is better than P6 so hopefully we have a good battle on our hands.”
Christian Horner – Team Principal
“An extremely tight qualifying session where both drivers extracted the maximum from the car. They were both very competitive today nonetheless we qualified in 5th and 6th which will become 4th and 5th tomorrow so hopefully we can take the good race pace we had in free practice into the grand prix tomorrow.”
Haas – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
For the first time in their history, the Haas team managed to get both their cars through to Q3 – well done!
Romain Grosjean – 8th
1:31.961
“I feel pretty good after that and I’m very pleased for the whole team. We brought a lot of updates, we made the front wing work on the car and that made a difference in qualifying. The whole session went very smoothly.”
“I didn’t get my DRS on the last stretch of the final corner but, we’re here and tomorrow’s a long race and this is a very difficult track.”
Esteban Gutierrez – 10th
1:32.547
“I feel so happy for the whole team – it’s surprising to arrive into qualifying and put both cars into Q3 as we started the weekend in a very difficult position.”
“We lost a lot of practice time in FP2 and we were not completely happy with the balance of the car but as a team – we managed to recover and pushed to the maximum we could and fought right to the end.”
“I feel very proud of the whole team and they all deserve this as they’ve been doing such a good job, without them, the engineers and mechanics – today would not have been possible so I dedicated what we achieved today, to them.”
Guenther Steiner – Team Principal
“A very good day for us – we completed our program in FP3and the guys learned a lot and we were able to set up the cars for qualifying resulting in P8 and P10.”
“Hats off to the team and to the drivers, tomorrow we’re going to try to do a good race and for sure if it’s possible, get into the points.”
Force India – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Sergio Perez – 7th
1:31.961
“It was a very intense qualifying session and there were lots of competitive cars out there – I even finished with the same time as Romain and I was lucky enough to be classified ahead of him – I am very happy.”
“Starting one place ahead of where we qualified because of Vettel’s penalty puts us in a strong position for a good result tomorrow and if we have a ‘normal’ race with no strange circumstances we can aim to score some points.”
“The strategy depends on the weather conditions tomorrow, especially if it’s much colder than today – overall, I’m feeling quite positive.”
Niko Hulkenberg – 9th
1:32.142
“I’m pretty happy with today and I’m starting in a good position tomorrow. My final lap in Q3 was looking really strong but I lost a couple of tenths at the final chicane – it was going OK but I didn’t really get the best exit from the corner.”
“We saw again how close things are in the midfield and I expect a big fight tomorrow, track position here is crucial so it’s especially important to make the most of our starting position with a clean start too.”
Robert Fernley – Deputy Team Principal
“I think our performance today is a fair reflection on the speed which we’ve shown here all weekend. Sergio and Nico both delivered some excellent laps – especially in Q2.”
“The laps in the middle of the pack were incredibly tight and it really is satisfying to come away from the session with both cars inside the top ten – for tomorrow, we can approach the race knowing that we have good race pace and the opportunity to score some points.”
Sauber – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Marcus Ericsson – 19th
1:33.222
“It’s been a tricky weekend so far – compared to the last weekend in Malaysia, here it has been more challenging to point the car in a direction where I wanted it to be.”
We cannot be satisfied with this result but tomorrow is a new day and we will fight back.”
Felipe Nasr – 20th
1:33.332
“It was a disappointing qualifying session for us, my first run in Q1 was good and I put in a decent lap time but when I went out for a second try, I couldn’t bring the tyres up to the ideal working window.”
“In the end, I couldn’t improve on my lap time – I am very disappointed with the result and we need to understand what happened.”
McLaren – Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying
Fernando Alonso – 15th
1:32.689
“After some strong weekends where we made it through to Q3 and were able to fight for points, it looks like we took some steps back and qualifying 15th and 17th is not the best place to be starting with Honda’s home grand prix.”
“So far, we just haven’t been able to find the speed in the car this weekend – we’ve been struggling with high-speed and straight-line performance too so it’s difficult to know which way we go in terms of downforce and balance.”
“It looks ilk our performance is changing from circuit to circuit and we need to analyse exactly why we seem to be under performing here.”
“Unless it rains tomorrow, it will be difficult for us to recover enough positions in the race in order to score points but I’ll be attacking tomorrow – I have nothing to lose.”
Jenson Button – 17th
1:32.851
“It’s been a tough weekend so far, I switched over to Fernando’s set-up this morning after failing to find a balance on Friday – my car just wasn’t working.”
“To be that close to Fernando, just three-hundredths off his best time in Q1 after the weekend we’ve had so far wasn’t too horrific.”
“Our lap-time today is simply a fair reaction of how fast we are around here – that meant I went out n Q1.”
“Suzuka has lost of mid to high speed corners, long-bends and long-straights which are generally trickier for us.”
Eric Boullier – McLaren-Honda Racing Director
“Clearly we’re disappointed, especially to have qualified only 15th and 17th here at Suzuka – host circuit to Honda’s home race.”
“Having said that, both Fernando and Jenson drove good laps – ending up being separated by just a few hundredths of a second. Sadly, today that was the difference between progressing into Q2 and not doing so which is why Jenson failed by the very narrowest of margins.”
“Suzuka is a great track, it’s a dramatic and challenging one in fact but the truth is – our car is ill-suited to it’s long straits and mid-to-high speed corners.”
“As always, we will do our best tomorrow in effort to score world championship points but to be honest, it’ll probably just be an uphill struggle.”
More to come soon ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix tomorrow.
The Formula 1 Girl 🙂
xx
