Yuki Tsunoda: I hope Liam and I will earn points

Yuki Tsunoda qualified for the final qualifying round at his home circuit in Japan with the ninth fastest time. His teammate Liam Lawson guaranteed himself an eleventh place at the start. AlphaTauri expects to earn points with two cars in the race.

Yuki Tsunoda (9th): “Reaching the qualifying final at your home Grand Prix is ​​an incredible achievement. It was the first time I could do this in front of Japanese fans – in the last laps I felt their huge support. Thank you very much to them, but I say even more thanks to the team.

We had some problems during Friday’s training, but the team did a great job and found an opportunity to improve. The car drove well, so I’m looking forward to Sunday. In Singapore I didn’t get to try out the new products during the race, but Liam had a good weekend and was fast, so I’m not worried.

I’ll try to enjoy it with the fans tomorrow. It won’t be easy because it looks like tire wear will be an issue, but it’s a level playing field so we’ll see what we can do. Liam and I have good starting positions, so I hope we both get points.”

Liam Lawson (11th): “It’s a pity that we did not manage to reach the final with a minimal gap. After Friday’s practice we didn’t expect to be so competitive, so we used a fairly aggressive tire strategy in the first session, leaving us with one set of new tires for the second part.

To be honest, I wasn’t confident before qualifying, but we managed the information correctly and Yuki did a great job and qualified for the finals. The challenge now is to get the best out of tomorrow’s race. I think it will take a long time because of the strong degradation of the rubber, but everything is equal.

You need to concentrate on getting the most out of the car. I hope Yuki and I have a strong race.”