Abu Dhabi GP – post qualifying update

12.12.20

p20

1m38.443s

Abu Dhabi. The last weekend of the season. A race where I wanted to round things off on a high. But I’ve got to be honest – so far its been tougher than expected…

I hoped to be challenging the Haas and Alfa Romeo drivers in qualifying, but in practice it was apparent we were lacking a bit of performance. The team made changes overnight, and they did close the gap a little, but the adjustments were also made with race performance in mind.

In the end though, qualifying was ruined by a silly mistake from me. I had balance issues on the first run, but I felt positive the second run would be stronger, even if reaching Q2 was going to be difficult.

A feature of qualifying here is that cars tend to back up in the last sector. I ended up driving slowly for a long time, and lost way too much tyre temperature. I got on the gas, it caught me off guard, and the car went around.

I’m sorry for the team. It was a rookie error on my part and not how I wanted to end the last qualifying of the year.

But no time to dwell on things. Sunday is a new day and I know my race pace will be stronger than today’s session.

I still believe we can get a good finish when the chequered flag falls tomorrow.