Fernando Alonso was very happy to return to Q3 with his Aston Martin AMR24 this evening in Qatar.
The Spaniard will start in 8th position and hopes to increase the Greens' points counter, stuck at 86 points for 4 races.
“I'm glad we got to Q3 in tonight's qualifying session and the car performed better than in any other session this weekend. We weren't able to progress in the Sprint but we made a few set-up changes after that and everything seems to be working as expected.”
“The team did a good job with that and also managed all the traffic during a busy qualifying session. It's a good starting position tomorrow and it's difficult to overtake here, so hopefully we can translate this racing performance.”
Lance Stroll was on pace with his teammate but made a costly mistake in Q2. He will start 15th.
“I had a big swerve at Turn 1 on my last lap of Q2 and lost about half a second. I don't think the tires were in the right window at the start of the lap because the grip wasn't “It just wasn't there for me, so that was the end of my hopes of getting through to Q3.”
“Looking back, we should have had a much quicker exit lap. The car seemed more competitive in qualifying after a few set-up changes after the sprint, so although it was close there, I think it was possible to do more.”
“The race is generally more difficult for us as our car is quite hard on the tyres, but we will see how we do tomorrow.”
