AlphaTauri’s Daniil Kvyat says his fastest lap in Q3 was one of the best of his career, as he stormed to seventh place at the Yas Marina Circuit.
Kvyat was four-tenths faster than team-mate Pierre Gasly, and just over a tenth away from reaching the top six positions.
The Russian is likely to leave AlphaTauri following this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and be replaced by Yuki Tsunoda, but denies there was less pressure on him which factored into his performance on Saturday.
“I don’t think that at all,” Kvyat said. “I think it’s been always there.
“And you always want to perform in Formula 1, if it’s not for current future, it is for the next future.
“So it’s always there in the way. It’s up to you how you just transform it into a good result.
“[The lap was] certainly one of the best ever. I don’t have a special ranking, you know, I don’t go to sleep making a ranking of my best qualifying laps.
“But certainly it’s one of them. And I’m very happy that it came today. And yeah, was very clean, very strong.
“We understood [a] few things more about the car with my side of the garage, so really the car was working exactly how I like it.”
Kvyat added that he has found confidence in the car as the season has progressed, stating the AT01 was far from his liking at the start of the year.
“I always kept pushing. I understood the car better and better this year,” Kvyat said.
“Maybe in the beginning of the year it was one of the cars that suited me the least ever in Formula 1 in the beginning of the year.
“But me and my side of the garage worked really hard. Like I mentioned many times from Spa onwards, we had a very positive turnaround of things.
“And now after Imola, let’s say, we are finding a new limit. And I think in qualis now, when the car suits me, I can be also very competitive.”
