#AlphaTauri – R13 EMILIA ROMAGNA GRAND PRIX – SATURDAY 31-10-2020

Pierre Gasly (AT01-01, Car 10)
Free Practice Session – Best lap: 1:15.633, pos. 4th, 46 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:15.183, (Q2) 1:14.681, (Q3) 1:14.502, pos. 4th
“It was a pretty busy session this morning! With only an hour and a half of practice, we had a lot of things to go through, but the car felt good from the first lap and we had a pretty good balance straight away. We did a few long runs just to get an idea on the tyre degradation for Sunday. We could extract also a bit more performance at the end with the soft tyres. We seemed quite competitive and we went into Qualifying with a positive attitude. This track is amazing, I said it before coming here but now driving it on low fuel in Qualifying mode it was just unbelievable. I put in some strong Quali laps and equalled my best Qualifying in F1 – P4 is pretty cool and I’m happy to do it here in Imola. We seem to be fast in Italy! Most of the work still has to be done tomorrow in the race, we’re starting in a strong position behind the two Mercedes and Max, so we need to keep the position at the start and go from there. Looking at the timesheets it’s going to be a tight battle and I’m excited about it.”

Daniil Kvyat (AT01-02, Car 26)
Free Practice Session – Best lap: 1:15.966, pos. 8th, 47 laps
Qualifying – Best lap: (Q1) 1:15.412, (Q2) 1:15.022, (Q3) 1:14.696, pos. 8th
“This morning was a busy session, as expected. We did many laps and tried a few things to get a good rhythm. As for my Qualifying, I was pretty happy with my lap, it was a tight Qualifying and there were very small margins at the end of the session. I think I missed maybe a tenth and a half to have a great result, but I am still satisfied with my lap. We had to be very careful about the track limits today, I still prefer the old school tracks where you’re penalized for running wide by gravel, but once I got to Q3 I finally got on the limit and was able to push harder. We will try to do our best tomorrow, there are good opportunities starting from where we are, so we will try and capitalize on that.”

Jody Egginton (Technical Director)
“Although there are no points given on a Saturday, we are quite happy with the two-day GP format so far in here in Imola! The car has been working well straight out of the box and the drivers and their engineers have worked well to achieve a good balance in both high and low-fuel configuration across all three compounds, with both sides of the garage achieving good grid positions for tomorrow. Qualifying itself went very well, with both drivers setting strong first times in Q1, meaning they were both able to progress to Q2 only using one set of tyres. As is always the case, this provided a useful opportunity for the drivers to extract the most from the package in Q3, and they have both been rewarded with good starting positions for the race, which we now need to capitalize on. There is still lots of work to do tonight preparing race strategies, but everyone in the team is looking forward to an exciting home race and will be aiming to score good points with both cars tomorrow.”