Charles, pole position for you today. Congratulations. That’s definitely the best way to start your season. How was your session?

Charles Leclerc: Stressful! It was the first session of the year. We never really know what to expect from the others. To be honest, my team and my engineer have done an amazing job with the set-up of the car. It was amazing. I was not really happy with my first lap, but we were still P1 which was a bit surprising to me. And on the second lap, I managed to put everything together although I lost a little bit in the last corner, but apart from that it was a really good lap. We are quite happy as well with the strategy: we did one push on the first set to keep the tyres for the race so we know we have better tyres for the race. It looks good. Tomorrow we will have to make a good start and then manage the tyres…

Let’s rewind a bit and talk about strategy: you set your best laptime when you were alone on the track. Was that decided before the session or did you assess the situation on site and decided to go with this strategy?

Charles: It wasn’t prepared at all. We saw that we were quite competitive on the first set of tyres. From then on, we decided to not risk anything and to go in the middle. My engineer asked me if I was up for it and I told him “yes”. Then we went in the middle of the session to avoid traffic. I think it was the right call!

You were also confident enough to rejoin the pits with I believe eight minutes left on the clock to watch the remaining of the session from the pitwall…

Charles: It was stressful, yes! But like I said we were in a good place to do this because I was confident the second run would be even better than the first one, but I didn’t expect it to be that much better! It was a really good lap and the car was amazing as well.

Tomorrow, the conditions will be quite different in terms of temperatures. It’s really hot this weekend. You will start next to your teammate as well. What are your expectations?

Charles: Now I am quite used to start next to my teammate with Alex (Albon) last year and Nyck (De Vries). They are all quite competitive! I just need to focus on the start and then everything will be ok. Obviously tyre degradation will be a concern for everyone because in such heat, it is quite hard to save the tyres. We will see tomorrow how it goes.

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Antonio, P2 today. A great job in an eventful session. How was it from the car?

Antonio Fuoco: It was not bad for me, but not perfect especially on the second set of tyres. I made a mistake at Turn 4 and I also had a yellow flag at Turn 9. So my lap was a bit compromised, but in the end we did a good job. We will start from the front row. It’s a 1-2 for PREMA for the first quali. That’s really nice, but now we have to switch into race mode and think about tomorrow. For sure, we can have a really good race.

Charles decided to go back on track in the middle of the session and benefit from an empty track. Why didn’t you follow that strategy?

Antonio: To be honest, our strategy was to wait until the end and we followed our plan, but in the end because of the yellow flag, we could not improve. But anyway, we have to think about tomorrow: it’s good to start from the from row and I think it will be really interesting tomorrow.

It will be a tough and long race. What is your plan?

Antonio: For sure it will be really hot and I think the degradation will be really high especially in the first part of the race. But it’s the same for everyone. We will have to manage the tyres well. We’ll see what will happen.

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Nyck, P3, a position grabbed in the closing stages of the session. How was your session?

Nyck De Vries: It’s been a very tough day for us actually. I mean in testing, everything went pretty smoothly. This morning however, we had some issue during free practice and we stopped on track. Then, I stalled at the start of the qualifying session and we couldn’t engage first gear in the middle of the session, so… We had all the troubles we could have and I’m happy and proud that nevertheless we managed to come out P3 and in front. It was strong from the team and myself to bounce back in the end so I’d like to thank them and of course McLaren and Jagonya Ayam for their support.

Was there more you could have shown by the end of the session had there not been a yellow flag?

Nyck: I think we were the best of the rest today. Clearly the two PREMA were extremely strong. Charles made a mega good job. They decided to go out alone in the middle of the session and they played that very well. Well done to them and we should be happy with P3 today.

What about tomorrow?

Nyck: I think it will be very challenging for everybody. It will be much hotter than at the tests. We expect the tyre degradation to be very high. So yeah it will be a very interesting race for the three GP3 graduates in front because it will be our first time coping with a long race, pit stops and in this heat, so let’s see!