10/10/2020
NEWS STORY
George Russell qualified 17th and Nicholas Latifi 18th for the Eifel Grand Prix. George's fastest time of Q1 was a 1:27.564 on his final run. Nicholas continued to improve throughout the session, with a time of 1:27.812 on his last effort.
Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: After a frustrating day on Friday, it was good to get out of the garage today. The track was busy throughout FP3 as everyone condensed their usual programmes into 60mins of running. We had a productive session and believe that we have got the car into a good window for the race tomorrow.
Qualifying was a little disappointing as the car had the pace to qualify for Q2, but we couldn't quite put the lap together, missing the cut-off by around half a tenth. We are now in a battle to get ahead of the Haas cars early in the race and hope that something in front of us unfolds to allow us to make some extra places. The cold and possibly damp conditions tomorrow should help produce an interesting race and there is still a lot to play for this weekend.
George Russell: I am a little bit disappointed; I think Q2 was possible if we had put everything together. It was tough in these cold conditions; the tyres are really difficult to get working. In FP3 they were working well, and the car was feeling great, but I couldn't get the same feeling in qualifying. That was a shame as we were so close to Q2 and I think we had the potential today. In ordinary circumstances we know exactly where we are so I am really excited for what the weather may bring tomorrow, hopefully it will be mixed and create a bit of chaos. It will be an interesting race and I am ready to fight tomorrow.
Nicholas Latifi: I think Q2 was achievable today. I wasn't completely happy with my laps on my second and third sets of tyres. They were a bit messy with some snaps here and there that hurt the laptime, so I am a bit disappointed on that front. We made some sizable changes from FP3 to qualifying to get the balance more in the window, which I feel we did. I think tomorrow will be interesting regardless, it could be mixed conditions, so I am very much looking forward to it.
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Nurburgring, here.