2024 Qatar - F1 Sprint Race and Qualifying

Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: Not the result we wanted today as we struggled to find the performance needed to be competitive. Both cars were eliminated in Q1 although it was very close for Alex to move into Q2 but he had a snap and lost time in the last corner of his final lap. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow as our long run pace on Friday was competitive but it’s difficult to overtake here so it will be a hard fight to gain some places.

Alex Albon: We just weren’t quick enough today and we have been struggling with that all weekend. Teams like Alpine and Stake have been bringing upgrades, so we’ve just fallen a little behind. We made some good changes between the Sprint Race and Qualifying, but it wasn’t quite enough; we also got caught out a little bit with wind at the end of our Quali lap. Tomorrow we’ll try to learn and do the best job that we can but it’s not easy to overtake here so we’ll have to see what we can do.

Franco Colapinto: It didn’t feel very comfortable to drive today and we struggled with the balance in Qualifying which made it very tricky for us. We changed the suspension in Parc Fermé which meant that we hadn’t had the chance to do a low fuel run in this set-up and we paid the price a little bit. We also made some changes after the Sprint Race, but maybe it wasn’t quite in the right direction. It’s a pity because the gaps were very tight, but our long run pace yesterday was strong, so we will focus on pushing tomorrow and see how it goes.