AlphaTauri drivers Nyck de Vries and Yuki Tsunoda have reflected on the practice session ahead of the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix. In a press release, both drivers commented on the team's performance during the first two practice sessions and estimated their chances for qualifying.
For De Vries, the training sessions were the first metres he drove at the Jeddah circuit. "It is a challenge, but I like driving the track," reflected the Dutchman. "The midfield is just super close, as there are only a couple of tenths between P11 and P20, so we’ll have to see what happens tomorrow. It can easily go in a good or bad way, therefore, we will make sure to be on top of our game to extract the maximum for qualifying tomorrow.”
'We are still a bit behind the rest'
During the first race weekend of the season, De Vries crashed out on the first lap of qualifying. His teammate Tsunoda still managed to reach Q2, but then had to settle for 14th place. Although Tsunoda assesses AlphaTauri's chances a bit more positively this time than two weeks earlier, he still acknowledges that it will be difficult for the team.
"What we’ve seen from practice today is that we are slightly behind those consistently fighting for P10, but we still have one more day to put it all together," Tsunoda analyses. "There were no major issues during FP1 and FP2, but we know that we have to find more performance in the car. Even if Q3 is the target, Q2 is more possible tomorrow than it was in Bahrain. Tyre degradation doesn’t seem as bad as expected, so we can push flat out."