06/11/2021
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "Today was so good and I'm extremely happy to be P5, what a fantastic Quali. The team have done a great job with the car, it seems to work well on this track, and we've felt really strong this weekend. I tried to put everything together in Qualifying and managed to finish three tenths ahead of sixth place. Yuki also did really well and helped in Q3 by giving me a tow. Hopefully we can finish well tomorrow, we'll continue to focus on ourselves this weekend and try and score as many points as possible here in Mexico."
Yuki Tsunoda: "I'm happy overall with today's performance. My main goal for Qualifying was to help my teammate, due to the penalty I'll have for tomorrow's race, and I think as a team we did a really good job as we continue our fight for 5th in the Championship. I think we've shown that the pace is there this weekend, so I'm aiming to make my way forward tomorrow in the race and looking towards the points."
Guillaume Dezoteux (Head of Vehicle Performance): "Following a positive Friday, our focus was on tidying up everything to extract the maximum from the car in Qualifying. In FP3 it was very difficult to find a good window for traffic, Pierre couldn't get a clean lap and Yuki also struggled to find clean space on track. Despite these difficulties, we remained competitive, which gave us confidence for the afternoon. The Qualifying session started with some action, as Stroll caused a red flag, but after this our plan was executed perfectly. Thanks to Yuki helping Pierre with a tow in Q2 and Q3 we have been able to secure 5th place on the grid. This is a fantastic achievement for the team and shows the strength of our package here in Mexico. Yuki will start further back as he has taken a complete, new power unit. He's beaten some of our direct competitors who were in the same situation, so this is very good. Now we need to convert this great pace into many points tomorrow as the fight with Alpine for 5th place in the Constructor Championship is tighter than ever. We have it in our hands, so we will carefully review the strategy options tonight and give it our all tomorrow."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Mexico City, here.