Saturday: Glock finds balance and Pic is in traffic at Marussia

Timo Glock – 20th and 21st [20th on the grid]:

After a difficult Friday for everyone, with no dry running, it was a rather studious Saturday. Free Practice 3 this morning was my first opportunity to get a feel for the new parts and, just as importantly, the small changes we made to fix the rear instability issue I’ve had in recent races. The team has put a lot of work into this, so I want to thank them because I think we’ve improved the situation, even though we still need to see how it plays out in the race. Qualifying was okay; the first attempt wasn’t great, but I could feel that it was possible to gain a bit more time due to some mistakes in the first lap. In the second lap, I lost quite a bit of time on the straight, probably because of the wind, I guess. Things picked up from there, and I was able to continue pushing corner after corner, but at the end of the lap, I lost the rear again under braking and lost time, so we’ll need to analyze that. It’s really a shame since we were in good form compared to the team we are following today, but hopefully, we can make up for it in the race tomorrow.

Charles Pic – 19th and 23rd [22nd on the grid]:

« I think we’ve taken a very good step forward with our latest innovations, but I’m disappointed with how the qualifications went for me. The first stint was fine, but we had room for improvement, and then, in the second attempt, we only had one flying lap to qualify with, and we encountered traffic in sector 2, so I lost a lot of time there. Against our competitors, we seemed very strong, so it’s a little frustrating. Now, we need to focus on the race and on what we need to do to show that we’ve made progress with our new developments. »