Fernando Alonso reached Q3 in Abu Dhabi, and the Aston Martin F1 driver did not forget to congratulate himself for his overall results for the year, which is certainly excellent in qualifying with 16 passages in Q3.
“Sixteen times out of 24 in Q3, with the car we have this year, I think it shows that this has to be my best season in qualifying” Alonso said. “If your teammate takes pole position or overtakes you, great, but I don't think we had the other car very often when we went into Q3.
“We did some good laps today, the team managed the traffic well, we took risks in certain decisions, I'm not saying that it's all on the driver's side, but I think that Saturday has long been our strong point this year and on Sunday our weak point, and that’s how it is.”
“We improved on a fast lap, we made a lot of changes to the car last night and the truth is that it didn't work very well because in FP3 we were still 17th and 19th.”
“We made more changes before this night session and it made the car more suited to the temperatures, the tires, everything is more in line with what I like and the car came to life a little bit and we miraculously entered in Q3.”
The Spaniard remains cautious about his chances of scoring points: “Tomorrow the race will be difficult, Leclerc starting behind like Pérez and Hamilton, we know that with the normal position we fall into 11th or 12th place, so we are not going to dream too much, but I am going to take advantage, because I think that It’s been a tough year.”
Lance Stroll expected worse than his 13th place: “Probably better than it was all weekend, we were more competitive than we thought but we used all our tires in Q1 so we didn't have any left in Q2.”
Asked about his chances of a good result in tomorrow's race, Stroll is cautious: “We will see tomorrow, I think it will be harder for us tomorrow because in general we are in more difficulty on Sunday than on Saturday.”
