In Abu Dhabi, both McLaren drivers reached the qualifying final, with Lando Norris finishing 7th and Daniel Ricciardo 10th, but due to a fine he received in Brazil, he loses three places at the start.
Daniel Rickardo (10th): “The results are encouraging, it looks like we can keep a good pace all weekend. Over the course of each session I felt that you can fight for top ten places with the car – let’s hope this will help to have a good race tomorrow.
As far as tactics are concerned, we haven’t decided yet. How many pit stops, one or two – who knows? We’ll see, but we’ll try to be creative.
This year I got knocked out too many times in the first part of qualifying, so I’m happy to get into the final today. It would be great if I could gain back a few tenths, and I even know where I can: overall I was doing a normal circle, but it seemed to me that I lost some time in the chicane in the second sector.
In any case, I am very happy that I was with the team in the last qualifying of the season and lasted the whole hour.
Lando Norris (7th): “It is unlikely that we could claim a higher position as we were ahead of all but the top three teams. In general, we did a good job, besides, Daniel went to the last session again.
Overall our situation is quite favorable, although I can’t say I’m very happy with the car – I’m not quite sure and couldn’t attack at the limit. That’s a bit frustrating because I think if the car allowed it I could qualify a bit better. But as it turned out, so it happened.
The seventh position in the final qualifying is symbolic in its own way, because next year I’m going to try to change my number to “7” because Kimi Raikkonen has retired. (laughs) Of course it’s a shame I didn’t manage to get ahead of any of the Mercedes cars, but in the final they managed to add more than me, although we didn’t lose much to them – I think I lost a few tenths to George Russell. However, it is not a fact that I could win back, so I am ready to accept the seventh result.
Of course I would like to be ahead of George in tomorrow’s race, but even if I do, I won’t be able to stay ahead of him for long. Although, of course, our team wants to take 4th place in the constructors’ championship, of course some kind of miracle has to happen. We need to win back 19 points, which is impossible when we finish in 7th and 8th place – generally we need luck to be on our side.
Source: F1 News
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