Pierre Gasly (AT03-04, Car 10)
First Practice Session – Best lap: 1:35.104, pos. 12th, 19 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:20.732, pos. 17th

“I don’t exactly know what happened today. The track was at the driest on our last lap, but we were still knocked out so it’s very disappointing. We need to make a lot of positions up tomorrow, as we’re obviously not where we want to be. Firstly, we need to go away and analyse everything from today to understand, we clearly could’ve done better, and then hopefully we can make our way forward across the rest of the weekend.”

Yuki Tsunoda (AT03-02, Car 22)
First Practice Session – Best lap: 1:33.611, pos. 9th, 18 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:20.474, pos. 16th

“We had brought a new update here this weekend, so we had expected to be in the midfield I think, but we struggled quite a lot today and the performance just wasn’t there. It’s a shame that we couldn’t maximise the opportunity, but we’ve got Sprint tomorrow and then another race on Sunday, so there’s lots of possibilities. It’s our home track, so we’ve got a lot of experience driving here and hopefully we can make the most of the rest of the weekend.”

Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer)

“Having missed the wet running in Barcelona shakedown, today was the first running on the 18″ wet and intermediate tyres, so we had plenty to learn in FP1. Our wet performance was good, but the Inters struggled to warm up. The track conditions were borderline for Quali, but it quickly went to dry, however we didn’t quite seem to have the pace we expected in those conditions and that, combined with not being the last to cross at the end of the session, meant we just missed out on places in Q2, with Yuki just 0.004 from 15th. Having both cars getting knocked out in Q1, with many of our factory members in the grandstands supporting, is hugely disappointing and a big blow to the team, but we will go away and learn from it, regroup. We now have the Sprint Qualifying to look forward to tomorrow, where the plan is to be aggressive! We can’t discard any surprises the weather may throw our way also, as we have seen these last few days.”