REPORT: A frustrating Saturday at the US GP

We came up short in a frustrating Saturday at the United States Grand Prix, as we missed out on points in the Sprint and were not able to get out of Q1 in the evening's Qualifying session.

The day began with the Sprint race, in which our drivers finished in P12 and P17.

Alex Albon started from the pit lane after setup changes were made to his car, but there were encouraging signs as he made up three positions, on track, in just 19 laps.

Franco, meanwhile, came home in 12th – but both cars showed good race pace, and the Argentinian's defence against faster cars behind him was admirable.

On then to Qualifying, where some early promise failed to materialise into safe passage beyond Q1. Franco lost the rear of hisa car through turns 4 and 5 during his final push lap, while Alex's second run was not quite quick enough to sneak into Q2.

Both drivers will receive a one place boost after a penalty to Liam Lawson – and a start in P15 and P16 will mirror our start at COTA in 2023, when we brought home our only double-points finish of the season. Here's hoping history can repeat itself on Sunday!

"A tough Qualifying session for the team," Franco reflected.

"We maybe went in the wrong direction with the change we made to the car for Qualifying. I thought we were going to be better, but I had a lot of bouncing in the high-speed and lost the rear very aggressively on my second push lap. We’ll try to understand what happened today and recover for tomorrow’s race."

Alex, meanwhile, said, "Obviously, we’ve been trying to recover from yesterday.

"I had the opportunity during the Sprint to practice and test different setups for a race run with varying levels of downforce, but I didn’t really like it. Ahead of Qualifying, we kept some of the changes while reverting to part of the original setup.

"Qualifying was honestly quite surprising. The biggest issue we faced was that I came out of the pit lane maybe a lap earlier than everyone else, so when we started our push lap, about nine cars had just come out.

"I was overtaking a car almost every corner, and there was a lot of dirty air, which makes a big difference here. I’ve been struggling with the car and don’t feel in rhythm with it, and the solutions we’ve tried aren’t working, so we need to dig deeper to figure out what’s going on. Tomorrow, we’ll see what we can do with our strategy and hope for the best."

Sporting Director Sven Smeets admitted that, "It’s not the result we wanted today with both cars out in Q1. Both drivers struggled this afternoon with the balance of the car and weren’t very happy with the behaviour on the Soft tyre.

"On top of that, Alex had a lot of traffic on his last push lap which cost him a few tenths and Franco made a mistake in his last lap so couldn’t improve. We have some work to do at home to try to understand the reasons behind the lack of performance but will now concentrate on the race tomorrow.

"Our long runs on Friday and our stint on the Medium tyre in the Sprint Race looked competitive, so we’ll see what the race brings tomorrow."