DRIVERS

1 – Oscar PIASTRI (McLaren)

2 – George RUSSELL (Mercedes)

3 – Lando NORRIS (McLaren)

TRACK INTERVIEWS

(Conducted by Jolyon Palmer)

Q: Well, down here with the top three. First things first, welcome back, Oscar. What a weekend it's been for you so far and that looked like a really controlled drive.

Oscar PIASTRI: Yeah, I mean, it's been a good weekend so far. I think everything went smoothly in the Sprint there, so yeah, happy with how it's been so far. Just need to keep it rolling.

Q: What do you feel has changed for this weekend compared to the tricky ones you've been on recently? Because from the first lap yesterday, you looked like you were right back in the zone.

OP: It's obviously a very different circuit to where we have been. Much higher speeds, much higher grip. I think the last couple of weekends it's just been things going wrong rather than a lack of pace, so to speak. So, I think here, everything’s going smoothly so far and the pace has been strong. So yeah, it's a track I've enjoyed in the past, so enjoying it again, clearly.

Q: Three out of three Sprint wins, well done. George, playing detective, I saw you at the end out of the car. We heard a little bit of chatter about your left front. How was the race for you? And obviously, you spent a bit of time in the dirtier air. How was that?

George RUSSELL: Yeah, I mean, it was a good race. Good to get P2. We obviously know these guys are really quick but those last two laps were a real struggle. This track's so quick. It's one of the most fun tracks to drive and it's obviously brutal on the tyres, on the car. So yeah, glad to bring it home.

Q: Talk me through the physicality around this place. Obviously, the high-speed corners, especially that last sector. I imagine the necks of all of you guys are going to take a bit of a working, but particularly for the Grand Prix tomorrow.

GR: Yeah, I mean, I was trying to rest it as much as I could to be honest. It's pretty brutal. I mean, I don’t know what the G-force is — it's like five G for what feels like forever around that triple right. But it's really cool. It's what it should be like everywhere really. And yeah, glad we got the chance to race around here.

Q: Absolutely. And Lando, good points for you, up in the top three once again. I can't imagine you loved seeing Max in your mirrors so close in the early laps, but you dealt with it very well. How was it?

Lando NORRIS: I never saw him, actually, I just saw George ahead. So yeah, I tried to go forwards. We got pretty close at the start, but it was good. No, I didn’t see what happened behind. So, long stint, it felt like a lot of pushing. So, like you said, it's going to be a tough race tomorrow. But yeah, just not easy to pass around here. Too difficult. So yeah, it's all about qualifying.

Q: He was having half looks down your inside at Turn 1 on lap two…

LN: Never saw him!

Q: Good to see you focused all the way in front then. Speaking of being in front – qualifying. You said yesterday you thought there was a little bit more in there. Didn’t quite hook up the soft tyres. You’ve got another chance later on. Feeling confident?

LN: Yeah, I mean, George was almost on pole, so he’s showing that the Mercedes is quick and he's doing a very, very good job. So, I think it’ll be close. I don’t think it’s going to be an easy one. But, you know, the team have also given us a very good car once again, as they always do this year, and it’s been quick. It’s a hell of a lap around here in qualifying, so I’m looking forward to it.

Q: Great. And Oscar, back to you. Lando’s saying the car has been great for you, but we know from the Sprint to the Grand Prix, things can change. You've been so good so far. Do you stick with where you're at or do you have to keep moving forward to find more pace for qualifying?

OP: Ideally, if we can find more pace. I think, you know, everyone slowly finds a little bit more through a Sprint weekend, so you’ve got to try and get every bit out of the car that you can. But yeah, we’ll try our best to do that. But I think our base performance seems very strong around here, so it’s more just tuning rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Very well done, Oscar. Your first P1 of any sort since Zandvoort. Just how sweet was it to be back up front with a clear road ahead?

Oscar PIASTRI: Yeah, it was nice. It was nice to have some clean air again. It makes a pretty big difference. So yeah, just nice to get off to a smooth start to the weekend, really. So yeah, car's been good so far and I feel like I've been able to gel with it pretty good. So yeah, obviously, the short part of the weekend's over, and now the real stuff begins.

Q: It looked like a very controlled race from you. Were there any anxious moments? At one point, you were talking about a vibration on the radio?

OP: Yeah, like five or six laps to the end. I think it was front left that was starting to vibrate a bit, and I hadn’t locked up or anything, so it’s never a great sign when you start getting vibrations out of nowhere. So I think it was a similar thing for other people as well. So yeah, we’ll see if there’s any concerns with that, but that was pretty much the only concern.

Q: You seem much happier in the car here in Qatar. What do you put it down to? Is it the different circuit? Is there something different in the car?

OP: I mean, it’s definitely a different circuit. You know, incredibly high-speed, much higher grip surface as well. But I think, honestly, the last couple of weekends have been not bad in terms of pace. It’s just been mistakes or things out of our control going wrong. So, I think this weekend, the pace has been probably a little bit stronger, but everything’s just been smooth. So, I think that’s the biggest difference.

Q: Any changes set-up wise ahead of qualifying this evening?

OP: I’ll find out shortly, but the car’s been good so far. So, if it is, it’ll be tweaks rather than anything major.

Q: George, let's come to you now. Very well done to you. From your point of view, how was the Sprint? How was the performance of the car?

George RUSSELL: Yeah, it was a pretty lonely race, to be honest. It was fun, because it was flat out, but I didn’t really have any chance of attacking Oscar and had a pretty good gap ahead of Lando as well. So it was pretty uneventful until the last three laps – similar to Oscar’s – started getting a big vibration on the tyres. I could just see it opening up and I thought, “yeah, this could be it,” you know, bit of a puncture or something. So just brought it home in the last two laps.

Q: It was quite a static race at the front, as you say. Coming into the weekend, did you expect to have a similar pace to the McLaren?

GR: We weren’t too sure, to be honest. I think we all expected Red Bull to be the favourites this weekend based on their high-speed performance. Qualifying was strange yesterday. You know, every single lap was improving so much, and it was whoever put the lap together on the last lap of Q3 that defined the starting order. And ultimately, on a track like this with the lack of tyre degradation – at least at the front – where you finish lap one is where you’re going to finish the race.
So I was happy with qualifying. It doesn’t mean that this afternoon is going to be the same again because ultimately, it’s just so tight.

Q: Going to make any changes? Do you think you can challenge for pole again today?

GR: Yeah. I mean, I felt really happy with my lap yesterday. It was one of my strongest of the season. I don’t think we’ve really got the pace, to be honest. I think if we absolutely nail it, we can be there or thereabouts as we were yesterday. But I don’t think it will be as straightforward this evening.

Q: Lando, let’s come to you. Congratulations. Another Sprint podium for you. Just how did the race play out?

Lando NORRIS: Pretty simple, really. You know, there’s not a lot going on. Nothing much throughout the whole race. Just impossible to follow around here, you know? As soon as you’re within three seconds or so, you start to struggle. So yeah, not a lot. I tried to save my tyres a bit for the end and the pace was certainly a little bit better. But yeah, after doing the whole race not too far behind George, then you pay the price in terms of tyre deg. So yeah, honestly, not too much.

Q: Paying the price for tyre deg – is that the understeer that you were referring to over the radio with your engineer Will Joseph?

LN: A bit of everything around here, to be honest. It’s understeer, oversteer. It’s a little bit more all over the place than in some of the last few tracks. So yeah, I mean, it’s just such a quick track. You really require every bit of downforce possible. And when you’re following so closely, you lose a lot of the downforce, so it just makes your life very, very difficult. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Q: And just how happy are you with the car? I mean, Oscar’s talking about only making minor tweaks ahead of qualifying this evening. Are you in a similar boat, or do you feel there’s more to find?

LN: No. I mean, the car is in a pretty good place. There’s certainly little things you might want to tweak as well, but it was more I just didn’t put things together at all yesterday, but the pace was there. So yeah, some things, some driving styles that have been working the last few weeks have just really not worked at all here, especially when it got quicker and quicker. The more I leaned on what’s been working, the more I just went slower and slower. So yeah, I tried to use the Sprint to try and learn some things. I feel like I got some things figured out and other things not. So yeah, maybe not in a perfect place, but probably a bit better than yesterday.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Ronald Vording – Motorsport.com) Question to all three, please. George, you said yesterday that maybe we need to look at the length of the DRS zones after the Sprint. Given today’s Sprint throughout the field was not the most exciting to watch, do you think that might help something for the main Grand Prix, or is it just as Lando said, almost impossible to follow here no matter what?

GR: Yeah. Well, I mean, I didn’t even get DRS one single lap, so it doesn’t matter if it was three times the length or shorter. I didn’t get within DRS. Obviously, when you go around a corner almost flat out with three high-speed corners before the straight, it’s challenging to stay close. And then Turn 1, we’re braking, let’s say, around 40 metres before the corner, whereas at other tracks we’re braking at 100 or 110 metres. So yeah, as I said, it’s definitely one of the best tracks on the whole calendar to drive. Overtaking? It’s one of the toughest.

Q: (Matt Coch – PlanetF1.com) To all three again, if I could. There’s a 25-lap stint limit with tyres. A couple of you reported vibrations. There are concerns of cuts in tyres with gravel and things as well. Do you guys have concerns with tyres and safety and what will you be feeding back following your experience in the Sprint?

OP: I mean, I think whenever you’ve got a vibration that sort of just comes from driving and not doing anything – me, you know, no lockups or anything – it’s never a great sign. I think in terms of safety, I think it’s the front tyres that are the main problem. So, I think the risk of having a catastrophic shunt from a rear puncture is probably pretty low. But yeah, whenever you’ve got to put a limit in for things like this, obviously it’s a little bit of a concern, but everything was fine in the Sprint. There was a bit of a vibration. It’s not the first time we’ve had a vibration from just driving, but I think it should be fine. I think they’ve taken the measures.

GR: Yeah. I guess when we see the tyre wear after the race, we’ll get an indication. I think the vibration was probably coming from major tyre wear. And you see in those corners – if you probably saw a slow-motion replay – the front left is all going to be rolling over onto the outside edge of the tyre, and that’s the bit that’s going to give up first. So I think it’s required to put this limit in because, at the end of the day, if you make a tyre for a 24-race season that’s specifically designed for a track like Qatar, you’ll then struggle everywhere else, if that makes sense. Or you’ll have different issues everywhere else. So I don’t think we should be putting any heat on Pirelli – they made the best tyre possible for 24 races – but it’s just the nature of this track being so quick. They need to introduce something like that.

Q: (Sam Johnston – Sky Sports) Question for Lando. We just heard you in the post-race interview saying that you didn’t see Max behind you. He’s been saying earlier this week that he would have won the championship easily in your car. Are we seeing the mind games ramping up? And maybe if Oscar has anything to say about Max saying he would have won easily in the McLaren, you're welcome to weigh in too.

LN: No. Look, yeah. Of course, I saw him. But he was never too much of a threat at all. So no, my focus was more just on George and seeing how I could keep the tyres in a good place for later. But Max is very welcome to say everything he wants, to be honest. He’s kind of earned the right. You know, he’s won four World Championships. I have a lot of respect and I think that gives anyone a lot of credit. He’s achieved an incredible amount – more than anyone generally dreams of achieving. So, you know, Max generally has a good clue about a lot of things, but there’s also a lot of things he doesn’t have much of a clue about. It’s also Red Bull’s way of going about things, this kind of aggressive nature and, yeah, just talking nonsense a lot of the time. So it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it – like you love to – or you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down, keep focused. So maybe he would have done, but he hasn’t so far, and he keeps trying.

OP: [Gives thumbs up]

Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) For all three of you. So it’s our first chance to speak to you since the driving standards meeting. Was that a productive gathering, and did you get some clarity after reviewing those various case studies?

OP: Yeah. I mean, I think it was very productive. I think it’s good to always give out direct feedback to the Stewards. I think [it was] tidying up a few things. I think generally things have been pretty good. Whenever you try and put any kind of guidelines or wording around going racing, there’s always going to be gaps somewhere. It’s impossible to cover everything. So, I think just some ideas and opinions on how we can close some of those gaps was good. So yeah, I thought it was productive.

GR: Yeah, definitely productive. I think from the incidents that were shown, all of the drivers agreed what the penalty either should have been or lack of penalty. And yeah, like Oscar said, the general consensus in the room is: if you put these guidelines in place, they absolutely have to be guidelines. Every track is different. Every overtake is different. Every circumstance is different. Sometimes you’ve got to use that racing knowledge that, as drivers, we’ve all accumulated over 20, 30, 40 years of our life. And the Stewards – the driving standards Stewards – sometimes have to judge it based on the common sense of racing, as opposed to exactly what a guideline says. Otherwise, you may as well have a lawyer dishing out the penalties. So yeah, hopefully we can migrate more in this direction.

Q: (Leonid Kliuev – Grande Prêmio) Question for all three. Kimi and Yuki had some problems with track limits – Yuki got a five-second penalty. Do you expect track limits to play a part tomorrow in the results of the race?

OP: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think here, normally, if you have a track limit, you’re touching the gravel or just running wide.

GR: Turn 10 entry.

OP: Turn 10 entry? Ah. Maybe not then. Maybe there will be a problem! I don’t know. I think it should be fine.

LN: Yeah, I mean, every corner is okay except that Turn 10 entry. So shouldn’t be an issue. But anyway, the only reference we have… well, there is no reference. It’s a white line. And we usually judge a track limit based on a kerb or up to a gravel trap. So yeah, I think that was a bit of a surprise for a few people. Could be an easy solution just widening that white line. But yeah.

ENDS