2024 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix, Saturday

Today in numbers
Free Practice 3: Esteban P14 (1min 31.022secs); Pierre P17 (1min 31.141secs)
Qualifying: Esteban P15 (1min 29.816secs); Pierre P17 (1min 30.119secs)

Esteban Ocon: “I was not completely happy with the balance of the car in final practice, so I’m pleased with how we reacted as a team to improve the set-up of the car in the short turnaround for Qualifying. The final lap in Q1 felt good, however everyone else around us managed to move up a gear in Q2. I feel we extracted the maximum potential of the car today but unfortunately it was not enough to progress further than fifteenth place. Tomorrow, we will try to look forwards and make the most of any opportunities that come our way. We will look to keep ourselves in the fight and see where we end up at the chequered flag.”

Pierre Gasly: “It’s definitely disappointing to be out in Q1 today. The car felt good in Sector 1 on my second push lap but, after that, we seemed to slide a lot and maybe overheated the rear tyres. I was struggling with traction out of corners, had a snappy rear end and it was just too messy for a completely clean lap. It’s an area we have to analyse and understand as it’s where we lack right now. We will fight in the race tomorrow as we always do. There will be chances and we have to maximise those tomorrow. We’ll play our cards on strategy and see if we can benefit from anything in front of us.”

Bruno Famin, Team Principal: “The upgrades have worked as expected for us but, clearly, there is still a lot of hard work ahead of us. We probably did not maximise the potential of both cars this afternoon, which we will analyse. There are things we must quickly understand, especially on tyre warm-up and management, as this is a big differentiator in such a tightly packed field. Tomorrow’s race will feature some interesting strategies. We will assess our options and look to progress our cars up the field and towards the all-important points positions.”