Nicholas Latifi:
"A very tricky qualifying session with the conditions being extremely poor. Having to use the Wet tyre is a bit of a challenge for everyone as they offer little to no grip. Whenever you can, you’d prefer to be on the Inters but there was a bit too much standing water. I was having a lot of issues under braking that we need to try and understand. When you don’t already have the grip in the corners and then you don’t have the trust that the car is going to stop makes it a very difficult session. It was better this morning in FP3, but we had limited running after hitting a groundhog which meant we had to make a couple of repairs. It’ll be challenging tomorrow but we’re hoping to move forward and maximise any opportunities."

Alex Albon:
"We had quite good pace in the car today with our best qualifying of the year. We made some changes to how we approached qualifying and that paid off for us, so I’m happy with today and think we did a good job. Despite running into the barrier at turn 6, I only damaged the front wing. Normally our race pace is better than our qualifying, so think we’re in a better starting position to do a good job tomorrow. Points are obviously my goal and it’s satisfying that we’re near P10 so that’s my focus. "

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance:
"It was a difficult day with tricky conditions throughout. What we learnt in FP3 was useful ahead of qualifying, which allowed us to do a good job this afternoon. Conditions in Q1 were tricky and finding some clear track with good visibility was tough but Alex managed it well and made it to Q2. The track dried very quickly in Q2 and the lap times tumbled, especially after the red flag. On his final lap Alex lost some time at T1 but otherwise completed a good lap to take P12 on the grid.

Nicholas found the conditions in FP3 challenging and he went into qualifying a little on the back foot. However, he did a solid job in Q1 but couldn’t find enough of a gain to progress to Q2.
Conditions look likely to be completely different tomorrow and so we will find out whether people made compromises for today or not. "

Track: Baku City Circuit, Azerbaijan

POS

DRIVER

TEAM

Q1

Q2

1:34.047