2019 FIA Formula One Emirates Gran Premio de España – Qualifying – Saturday

Weather: FP3: cloudy, 21-23°C air, 32-39°C track; Qualifying: sunny, 20-21°C air, 31-36°C track

Oh dear, oh dear.

Not the best day in the office today, and all of this in front of a very special guest in our garage. Per Gessle of Roxette was with us, watching the session. IT MUST HAVE BEEN QUAL, BUT IT’S OVER NOW. Kimi and Antonio didn’t manage to SPEND THEIR (LAP)TIME in the best way, and we’re now in a quite VULNERABLE position in the lower half of the grid. Our engineers will be here until late tonight, SLEEPING IN OUR CAR if they need to, to find the best strategy to turn tomorrow’s race into a JOYRIDE. It’s a long race and anything can happen: we’ll just need to avoid doing something DANGEROUS (don’t want any CRASH! BOOM! BANG! to compromise our day) and we’ll be set to RUN TO YOU, Top 10. LISTEN TO YOUR HEART. You know you want it.

Frédéric Vasseur, Team Principal Alfa Romeo Racing and CEO Sauber Motorsport AG:

“This was not a good qualifying session at all: In the morning everything seemed to be fine, but then the temperature increased and all of a sudden we couldn’t get the tyres working. But it’s not just that, we have too many issues at once which slow us down and which we have to improve for tomorrow’s race.”

Kimi Räikkönen (car number 7):

Alfa Romeo Racing C38 (Chassis 02/Ferrari)

Qualifying: 14th / 1:17.788 (14 laps)

3rd practice: 9th / 1:17.969 (17 laps)

“We struggled a bit with the set up at the beginning of the weekend, but then FP3 was quite okay. Then the conditions changed and this made it difficult for us. On one hand I’m not happy, on the other hand we tried everything. We did the best lap of the weekend in qualifying but unfortunately it’s not fast enough. It’s not one big issue we have, it’s lots of little things which we need to work on and improve.”

Antonio Giovinazzi (car number 99):

Alfa Romeo Racing C38 (Chassis 03/Ferrari)

Qualifying: 18th / 1:18.664 (8 laps)

3rd practice: 16th / 1:18.740 (14 laps)

“I have been struggling with my brakes all weekend and it was no different in today’s qualifying. It’s quite disappointing to go out in Q1, I did a mistake in Turn 10, locked up the fronts and that probably cost me a place in Q2. Tomorrow’s race will be challenging because overtaking here is not easy. We will continue working on making improvements and see what we can do in the race.”