2023 Australian Grand Prix Qualifying

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: Alex had an excellent qualifying session today. He was able to keep out of traffic and prepare his tyres well and consistently. As a result, each lap he did was strong, and he was able to build his confidence and finish the session in a good position.

Once again, the sessions were tight with several teams completing similar lap times. This was good for Alex as he was able to just beat Gasly and Hulkenburg to take a very promising P8 on the grid. Conversely for Logan, a small mistake at the end of his final lap in Q1 cost him a place in Q2. Given that he lost valuable time in the car yesterday, his pace today was very good, and he can look forward to a positive race tomorrow.

Alex Albon: Today is pretty special; we optimised everything we had with a very good car, so I’m feeling really happy. We were struggling in the practice sessions to get the tyres to work but we went into qualifying and executed our plan which paid off, the tyres worked, and everything else fell into place. Looking at the progress the team has made in 12 months, knowing we’re able to fight for points each weekend, myself and the team live for that and motivation is high. We have a job to do tomorrow but we’re in the fight.

Logan Sargeant: It wasn’t the smoothest of qualifying sessions and I did struggle to find those last couple of tenths. I felt like I was building up nicely and the session was coming to me - I was getting quicker and quicker – and was on a definite good enough lap for Q2 there at the end and just made a mistake in sector 3. We’ll start to see results improve when I put everything together. We haven’t had many laps this weekend with the electrical issues in FP1 and missing out on FP2 because of that, but we were capable of Q2 today. It’s hard to tell what car we have for tomorrow as we haven’t done any consecutive laps but generally, we have a pretty quick car in race trim, especially on the straights, so we know we can fight the people around us. Tomorrow is about being procedurally perfect, having a good start, good race pace and we’ll look to make some moves.