Pierre Gasly (AT03-04, Car 10)
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:44.491, pos. 7th, 21 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:43.268, (Q2) 1:43.129, (Q3) 1:42.845, pos. 6th

“I’m extremely happy, that’s my best Quali of the year, I don’t think we could’ve hoped for anything better for the team and it’s great we’ve got both cars in the top 10 today. The team did a great job, the car works really well here, and it was a really strong Quali for us. Everything is possible here in Baku, we saw that last year with our podium. It’s very easy to make mistakes on this track, we normally see a lot of red flags, so we’ve got ourselves in a good starting position to capitalise on anything happening at the front. We’ve got one set of Hards compared to other teams that have two, so we’ll have to see in terms of our strategy what we want to do, but today I’m really happy with our overall performance.”

Yuki Tsunoda (AT03-02, Car 22)
Third Practice Session – Best lap: 1:44.964, pos. 16th, 20 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:43.595, (Q2) 1:43.376, (Q3) 1:43.056, pos. 8th

“It’s been a good day, I’m really happy with that Quali. I got a bit lucky getting through to Q3, but I think the lap I did was good, especially considering it was an old set of tyres, so I’m pleased with my performance today. As a team, I think we did a fantastic job, so I want to say a big thank you to everyone. Hopefully we can carry on this performance tomorrow and we’ll look to finish the race with both cars in the points.”

Guillaume Dezoteux (Head of Vehicle Performance)

“The last free practice session highlighted how tight the midfield was going to be for Quali, with just above 0.5s difference from P5 to P16! We elected to keep only one hard tyre for the race, in order to maximise our chances in Quali by using five sets of soft tyres. The first Qualifying session was intense, especially with the red flag at 2min 30s before the end. We managed it well and both cars were able to make it through with strong laps. The second Qualifying session started very well, we went out on used tyres and continued to show the competitiveness of our package on this layout. During the new tyre run at the end of Q2, Yuki made a mistake and went long in T2 after light contact with the wall. Luckily there was no damage, and we could carry on. Q3 was great and we managed to out-qualify the midfield, as well as one of the Mercedes. Pierre wasn’t able to improve on his last attempt with new tyres, which is something we need to analyse and understand with him. Yuki had a great last lap, which is never easy after making a mistake earlier in the session. This result puts us in a strong position for tomorrow, we will review all the possible strategies to convert this good ranking into the maximum number of points in the race.”