Of the McLaren drivers, only Lando Norris reached the qualifying final and eventually showed the 7th result, and only rivals from the top three teams start ahead of him. Daniel Ricciardo was unlucky – he was prevented by the consequences of the incident that happened in front of him on the track.
Lando Norris (7th): “My best lap in qualifying was very normal, so I’m happy – I didn’t expect to be able to show a 7th result. Overtaking on this track is difficult, the race will be long, but today we did our best.
Our main goal is to finish ahead of the Alpine racers, but it would be wrong to be satisfied with that. We have to try to finish as high as possible and earn as many points as possible.
It will be good for me if I spend the race alone tomorrow, because the six riders of the top teams will certainly increase the lead. At the same time, I hope that Mick Schumacher and Yuki Tsunoda will fight among themselves and leave me behind.
Although Lance Stroll went pretty fast today, something happened to him in the last session, I’m not sure what. Esteban Okon and Fernando Alonso have no speed all weekend, but I think they can still move forward tomorrow.
Our car is doing well on this track – everything is much better than last weekend at Spa, and it’s more fun to fly here, although of course we have something to work on. But I believe in our team – I wouldn’t sign a contract with them if I didn’t hope to get high results with McLaren.
Daniel Riccardo (17th): “I’m angry that I got out of the fight at the start of qualifying. I was sure we would go through to the second session, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought.
I only had some bad luck in the penultimate corner of the lap: the car in front dragged some kind of mud onto the track and I started to slide, losing about three tenths. In general, it cost us dearly, because even after that I hoped to win back a few tenths – it seemed to me that this was possible.
So everything turned out not too unsuccessful, the mood is spoiled. Tomorrow’s race will be difficult, but we will do our best.”
Andreas Seidli, Team Principal: “Qualifying at Zandvoort left mixed impressions. Lando put in a great lap, pushing their cars to the limit and setting the 7th fastest time. Daniel was not lucky, there was an incident on the track in front of him that prevented him from improving the result, and tomorrow he will start 17th.
Since the start of the weekend, the car has been able to show good speeds and in the course of qualifying preparation we managed to successfully adjust the settings, which allowed us to fight for quite high positions.
As a result, we start behind the top three teams, and this is a good result, so we can expect to fight for the points tomorrow. The most important thing now is to focus on race preparation and we are already looking forward to an exciting Dutch Grand Prix.”
Source: F1 News
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