After the contrasting fortunes in Friday's running, Saturday morning started positively for McLaren Honda. Both drivers completed their full scheduled run plans with no issues and reported back optimistically on the work done overnight to improve the balance and handling of their cars.
In FP3 Fernando completed three runs focussing on race set-up rather than qualifying pace, and ended his ย session with practice starts and pitstops. The Spaniard completed 22 laps to finish 16th overall.
As he had incurred grid penalties for a PU change this weekend โ20 in total โ the team opted to prioritise race preparation over qualifying performance โ the latter of which would have done nothing to influence their starting grid positions.
Fernando opted to run lighter in Q1 where he drove a fantastic final lap to set the fifth fastest time of the session.
In Q2, he took to the track but didn't set a time. Due to his penalties, Fernando will start in 18th.
โI'm extremely happy with the performance of the car so far this weekend. It felt great yesterday and also today, with a lot of grip in the corners and it gave me some good feelings in the high-speed sections, too,โ he said.
โIn Q1 we proved how strong we are on this track. Being only two tenths off the fastest time shows what a great job McLaren is doing. I felt we had the best car out there today. It was good fun!โ
โObviously saving some tyres in Q2 was the main priority today. With the straight-line deficit we have here, it's going to be difficult to overtake tomorrow, which is the key point for us. The penalty will hurt massively because starting last we will run behind traffic for the whole race, but we'll try to be aggressive and if something happens in front of us we'll take the chance.โ
