Aston Martin Red Bull Racing F1 Sakhir Grand-Prix qualifying – Close but not close enough

SAKHIR GRAND PRIX
Bahrain International Circuit – Outer Track
4-6 December 2020
Saturday, 5 December 2020

MAX VERSTAPPEN, Position: 3rd, 0:53.433 (Practice 3 – P1, 0:54.064)

“Close, but not quite close enough. We can be happy about qualifying, and although we always want more, for us to be P3 on a track like this is pretty good. The gap is very close and it is a bit of a shame to miss out by so little. On such a short lap it was always going to be very tight but I think I got the most out of the lap. For sure both of the Mercedes cars will be quick tomorrow.

George is a good driver so we need to take care of both cars to try and win. We are starting on a different tyre to them so it will be interesting to see how it’s going to play out and the start will be very important. Like I’ve said before, we’ve got nothing to lose so it’s better to have a bit of fun tomorrow and see what we can do. I’m looking forward to it.”

ALEX ALBON, Position: 12th, 0:54.026 (Practice 3 – P6, 0:54.629)

“I’m surprised with today’s qualifying because after FP3 I was happy with the car and it felt like we were on for a good result so to come 12th is frustrating and we need to understand where it went wrong. We decided to only run the medium tyre in practice today to save the softs for qualifying and the car just felt very different between the two sessions so maybe that hurt us.

Tomorrow it’s all to play for though and we know overtaking is possible here plus we’re running slightly more downforce than the others so hopefully we’re better on our tyres. Our race pace looked pretty strong on Friday and we also have a free tyre choice so we’ll have a long look at that tonight and see what we can do. We just need to keep out of trouble at the start and then the plan is to fight through the field.”

CHRISTIAN HORNER, Team Principal

“We knew it would be very tight in qualifying and I think Max got everything out of the car, so to lose out on pole by the same margin that Alex missed out on Q3 is encouraging and frustrating at the same time. It’s still third nonetheless and starting from the second row on the clean side of the grid is not a bad place to be.

Max also starts on a different tyre compared to both Mercedes and hopefully a different strategy for tomorrow will provide opportunities in the race. It’s frustrating not to have Alex in Q3 and the small margins around such a short circuit mean that the smallest mistake can cost you a lot. The Team will help him understand what happened today and I’m sure he will be looking to make good progress through the field tomorrow. With overtaking possible, we aim for both cars to have a strong race.”
 

Vicky Lloyd photos Red Bull

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