1. Lando NORRIS (McLaren), 2. Kimi ANTONELLI (Mercedes) , 3. Charles LECLERC (Ferrari)<\/p>\n
PARC FERM\u00c9 INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Romain Grosjean)<\/p>\n
Q: Lando, congratulations. What a day for you. Not an easy day with the conditions, but congrats on that pole. How did it feel?<\/p>\n
Lando NORRIS: Thank you. Again, tough out there with the conditions. Just slippery, inconsistent, but good fun. It’s always a pleasure around this track, you know. I felt good. I was under a bit of pressure because I locked up on my first lap, so a little bit more stressful than what I would have liked but I stayed calm and put it all together when it mattered. So, very happy.<\/p>\n
Q: It’s an amazing track, as you know, and an amazing day for you. Just impressed by the momentum you’re building right now in terms of speed and race craft.<\/p>\n
LN: Yeah, thanks. Yes, I mean, we’ve been on very good form. The team are good at giving me a great car, of course. So, I’ve always got to thank the team, but I didn’t make it easy for them or for myself then. I’m still having to push, Q3, run one, just locking up in Turn 1, it puts unnecessary pressure on myself, and the others are doing a good job. But I think when I’m in a good rhythm, when I can stay calm, when I can just put it all together, then I’ll be on top.<\/p>\n
Q: Kimi, talking of pressure on Lando, you’re the man this weekend. Yesterday in Sprint Qualifying, this morning in the race, congrats on a good qualifying. What can you do to try to get one more spot?<\/p>\n
Kimi ANTONELLI: Yeah, to be fair, I’m a bit annoyed I’m again behind him. I mean, we’re so close this morning in the Sprint as well but it was a very tricky session with the wind. Very tricky to put a lap together but still managed in the last run to put a decent lap, and yeah, happy with that. Starting P2 tomorrow. Of course, they’re very fast, so it’s going to be important to get a good start and try to set a good pace.<\/p>\n
Q: Charles, congrats on almost not making it out of Q1 to being third on the grid. How did you do that?<\/p>\n
Charles LECLERC: I mean, very good laps in Q2 and in Q3. Everything is so close that it goes from being a disaster of a weekend to a really good weekend in a matter of a few hundredths. So, yeah, I’m happy I could put everything together in Q2 and Q3. That was crucial for us because it was very on the limit. And then P3, I’m satisfied with that. It’s been a difficult weekend for us.<\/p>\n
Q: Lando, last one for you. What’s the game plan tomorrow? What have you learned from this morning that you can put into the race?<\/p>\n
LN: I learned that they’re pretty quick. And I learned that Kimi pushes all the way to the very end. So, in some ways looking forward to it, some ways I’m not. I think it’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow. We have to see what the weather’s going to do again, but so far this weekend’s been clean. So, I’m hoping they don’t ruin it.<\/p>\n
PRESS CONFERENCE<\/p>\n
Q: Lando, what a final lap of Q3. The pressure was on, and you delivered.<\/p>\n
LN: Yeah, thanks. It was for sure more stressful than I would have liked, especially because we’ve been very quick all weekend. Just didn\u2019t need that. I don’t really know how it happened. I looked at the data after, quickly, between the two runs, and I braked earlier with less pressure, and still somehow locked up. So yeah, a bit weird. Maybe a bit of wind or something. But yeah, that certainly put a little bit more pressure on my final lap, and I saw the others improving \u2014 but not a lot. It was just difficult again, just with the track conditions, the wind, everything \u2014 hard to get a nice feeling out there. So again, I didn\u2019t know if I was up or down on my delta, so I was a bit stressed. But when I went over the line and saw the lap, I was pretty happy. And when I saw no one running quicker, even happier.<\/p>\n
Q: How close to the perfect lap was that second run?<\/p>\n
LN: You never know around here. My Turn 1 wasn\u2019t amazing. I think Kimi was purple in Sector 1 by a thousandth, so maybe a thousandth more there. There were little bits, but it’s so difficult with the wind. Every lap, it changes \u2014 three kilometres per hour, four kilometres per hour, you don\u2019t really notice it probably when you’re standing there, but it can easily make you go a tenth quicker in a corner or half a tenth here and there, and that can be a lot at the end of the day. That can be positions, it can be pole and not pole, those kinds of things. So, difficult. And sometimes you do the same thing \u2014 you repeat, like my Turn 1 \u2014 but you just make a mistake for no apparent reason, no obvious reason why, in the car. So yeah, difficult as it was for everyone today, but definitely not a perfect lap \u2014 but good enough.<\/p>\n
Q: Lando, it’s been a good day for you. You’ve won the Sprint. You were fastest in every segment of qualifying. How confident are you feeling in this car now?<\/p>\n
LN: It depends. I mean, confident in what? I think in our race pace tomorrow \u2014 not the most I\u2019ve had. I was certainly more confident in Mexico. I think after this morning, with the Mercedes pace and Kimi’s pace, it certainly lowered my confidence level altogether. But we\u2019re still quick. We\u2019ve still got that little advantage in qualifying, and I really hope that we can continue that into the race tomorrow. But the weather is going to change again \u2014 I think it\u2019s meant to be even colder, which might suit them even more. And the wind is meant to change also. So it’s difficult. Every track is so different. The feeling I have on one track is different to the next and those kinds of things. But I just feel like I\u2019m doing a good job. I’m driving well. Before, earlier in the season, I would just have weaknesses, and I feel like I\u2019ve, let\u2019s say, I\u2019ve maybe still got some here and there, but I\u2019ve lessened them, they\u2019re not like one tenth now \u2014 it\u2019s two hundredths. So when I can put together the good parts and have those not-so-bad parts, things go very well.<\/p>\n
Q: Pirelli have brought harder dry compounds to this race this year. Do you think it\u2019ll be a complicated strategic race tomorrow if it\u2019s dry?<\/p>\n
LN: We\u2019ll have to wait and see. That\u2019s what tonight\u2019s for, honestly. I don\u2019t look too much into strategy until Saturday night. So, we\u2019ll see. I think everyone has the same in common. The Soft certainly doesn\u2019t feel like, you know, a Medium-to-Soft step. The Soft certainly doesn\u2019t handle like what the Medium did last year. So it\u2019s interesting. There are still some differences, and again, conditions can change everything. So we\u2019ll just do, as always, our work tonight and prepare the best way possible.<\/p>\n
Q: Lando, very well done. Thank you for that. Kimi, many congratulations. Another day, another front-row start for you here at Interlagos. Just how good was the session and that final lap of Q3?<\/p>\n
KA: Yeah, it was a very tricky session. To be honest the wind was not the best today \u2014 it was a bit more of a pain in the ass around the lap, to be fair. But still, the last lap in Q3 was quite decent. I locked up a little bit the rear in the last corner, but despite that little mistake, I don\u2019t think it would have been \u2014 Lando would have still been fastest. So yeah, just not the perfect lap, but still good for P2 and we have a good opportunity tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Q: Can we talk about tomorrow? You put pressure on Lando at the end of the Sprint today. Just how confident are you going into the 71 laps tomorrow?<\/p>\n
KA: Yeah, definitely. The pace this morning was really strong. It was also quite cold and tomorrow should be kind of the same. So maybe that can help us a little bit more. But, you know, running in dirty air is never easy. Hopefully, we can have a strong pace and put pressure on them and hopefully we can fight for the win.<\/p>\n
Q: You say running in dirty air is not easy. So is it all about the start tomorrow?<\/p>\n
KA: Well, we\u2019ve seen many races so far this season that the start and track position can play a massive role for the rest of the race. Of course, Lando has been starting very strong recently, so we need something exceptional. But on my side, I just try to do a normal start, not try to do too much, and then at least hold position. Then we\u2019ll see from there.<\/p>\n
Q: Very well done. Good luck with that and thank you, Kimi. And Charles, let’s come to you now. It feels like Ferrari have done a bit of a turnaround this weekend. Just how much better was the car in qualifying today compared to Sprint Qualifying yesterday?<\/p>\n
CL: I don\u2019t want to over-exaggerate the turnaround that we’ve had, because we’re only speaking about a tenth and a half maybe. But the thing is that this weekend, a tenth and a half means out of Q1 or inside Q3. I think where we did a really good job is by executing everything perfectly from Q1 to Q3, because we knew that we were\u2026 I mean, it\u2019s been a very difficult weekend since FP1, and we knew that we would struggle to get to Q2 and then Q3. But we did everything perfect. So I’m very happy about that. We changed the car a little bit from this morning, and that helped us to do a step forward as well. So yeah, altogether, to start P3 \u2014 I think we should be really satisfied with that because I don\u2019t think anybody of us expected that after such a difficult beginning of the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Lando NORRIS (McLaren), 2. Kimi ANTONELLI (Mercedes) , 3. Charles LECLERC (Ferrari) PARC FERM\u00c9 INTERVIEWS(Conducted by Romain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-125687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}