Dr Colin Kolles, Team Principal: It was a difficult day for us but everyone in the team did a great job. The changing crosswinds had effects on the car balance. In qualifying, we had a small balance problem on the rear end of Sakon Yamamoto’s car which didn’t allow us to go quicker. Karun Chandhok was unlucky on his second outing when he was disturbed by traffic. Otherwise he could have done a quicker lap. For Sakon it is not easy to start into the season without having raced since 2007. There are many small details like how to use or heat the tyres that he has to learn about. But Sakon is improving every lap and as there are 52 laps to go in the race tomorrow, he can show a good performance. All in all, we could work on the set-up for the race and are confident, to fight for positions with the other teams on Sunday.
Karun Chandhok (23rd): I had quite a messy run with traffic which was really frustrating. We lost about four tenths on the first run when I was in traffic on my quickest lap. Then on the second run, I had a lot of traffic on the out lap and couldn’t get the tyres in the window. It’s a shame because we had the potential to go at least half a second faster. Considering that I was faster this morning in FP3 I think I could have been quicker without the traffic. It’s going to be a long hard race tomorrow with the high loads on the tyres and the bumps and we’ll do the best job we can.
Sakon Yamamoto (24th): Yesterday, it was a memorial day for me in my life being back in Formula 1 on my birthday. I am very pleased about the qualifying result even though it was a bit difficult because of changing wind directions. I like this circuit because it is very challenging for the driver and the new track layout is also quite interesting. We expected to go a bit quicker but the car balance was slightly changing compared to the morning session. We will have to find it out for tomorrow. I am looking forward to the race and I am going to do as best as I could to give something back to the team.
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