The first Qualifying session of the 2024 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season took place under the floodlights at the Bahrain International Circuit on Friday evening, and it was Max Verstappen who took pole position for Oracle Red Bull Racing.
Daniel Ricciardo, Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz Jr. had topped the three free practice sessions across Friday and Saturday, but when it mattered, Red Bull found their form and took yet another pole position. And remember, Verstappen has won each of the last sixteen times he has started from the very front of the grid.
In part two, let’s see what the remaining ten drivers had to say after the first Qualifying session of the season!
#22 – Yuki Tsunoda – Visa CashApp RB
“It’s a shame we missed out on Q3 by that little, but I’m happy with my performance. We struggled a lot yesterday, especially in FP2, but the team did a fantastic job of turning things around overnight, and the car felt good today.
“We’re still in the process of understanding our car properly, but we’re improving in each session, so we’re happy with the progress. I think we maximised our package today, but the race is where points are scored, so we’ll focus on tomorrow and do it again.
“The car is in a good place in the long run, so I’m feeling confident and excited to race again!”
#18 – Lance Stroll – Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 Team
“The AMR24 felt good in Qualifying – a reflection of the work we put in over testing to configure the set up. I had a strong flying lap in Q1 and was happy with my pace, but then got caught in some traffic at Turn 13 in my final Q2 run. That can be the difference between progressing [into Q3] or not when it’s such a tight field and every tenth matters.
“Such a close pack should make for an interesting race tomorrow; I’ll do my best to get a good start and we’ll go from there.”
#23 – Alexander Albon – Williams Racing
“P15 was where we predicted we’d be today so it’s a slight reward qualifying P13. On paper, it’s mixed feelings because I feel like we did a good job and got the most out of the car but we’ve definitely got more performance in it, which isn’t a bad thing.
“I was excited to go out today on low fuel and feel the car light but I think tomorrow will be very close. We’ve made big improvements, but everyone has so it’s all relative. This circuit is always very close so let’s see how we go tomorrow.”
#3 – Daniel Ricciardo – Visa CashApp RB
“I’m not too happy with my performance tonight and a bit disappointed, to be honest. I think the weekend was going steadily and we were feeling fairly confident coming into qualifying. In the end, I never felt completely comfortable and felt like there was something I was struggling with during the lap, and therefore, didn’t cross the line feeling like I’d done a good job.
“As for our car and pace, as you see where Yuki is, that’s where we expected to be. Tonight was the least comfortable I felt so far this weekend, but going into the race, the approach to the track and car is different, and I’ve got more confidence going into tomorrow. I think there’s still a chance for points.”
#20 – Kevin Magnussen – MoneyGram Haas F1 Team
For me, I can’t be happy with that, I didn’t do a good lap in qualifying. The positive thing is we feel we’ve made some progress with the car, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow in the race. I know our race pace is decent so we can be more competitive, which hopefully is the case, and if it is then it will be a very different situation to last year where we were only falling back.
“I’m gutted with today honestly but looking forward to Saturday.”
#77 – Valtteri Bottas – Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber
“It’s no secret that we are not where we expected to be today. As a positive, everything worked okay on our car – unfortunately, what we were lacking is a bit of single-lap performance. We already saw from the final practice session, earlier today, that getting past the Q2 threshold was going to be a tough job, as it is really close out there in the field.
“In terms of setup, we opted to prioritise the race more than qualifying, and hopefully tomorrow we’ll get to take advantage of that. We’ll be working on finetuning our package overnight, to try and extract something more ahead of the race.”
#24 – Zhou Guanyu – Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber
“Unfortunately, we did not achieve the result we were hoping for today. It has been a tricky and inconsistent weekend for us so far, and we didn’t manage to find the optimal setup over the last two days.
“We knew that we might struggle with our one-lap pace and that making it all the way to Q3 could be difficult, but we expected to be more competitive. While my lap wasn’t perfect, extracting another tenth from it would have been challenging. And although this isn’t the best start to the season, we need to focus on ourselves and find ways to extract more performance.
“Now, it’s about analysing the data, gaining a better understanding of our package, and taking a step forward in the race and for the upcoming weekends. Tomorrow is a new day, and we’ll give it our all to make up for the lost position today.”
#2 – Logan Sargeant – Williams Racing
“The first run was great but the second run wasn’t so good. I’m a little bit confused about the difference in tyre performance across the two runs; it didn’t feel like I had the tyre in the right window on the second set and I lost a significant amount of rear grip. It’s a little bit disappointing but at least the performance was there in the car.
“Nonetheless, we knew it would be very tight and that it is. It’s hard to say exactly where we are on race pace but I feel quite comfortable within myself on race pace, so hopefully we can use that to our advantage tomorrow.”
#31 – Esteban Ocon – BWT Alpine F1 Team
“We expected it was going to be difficult coming into Qualifying and that proved to be the case. It’s important that we realise where we need to improve, which is something we identified very early on with this car. As I said on the radio, I’ve got faith and confidence in the team to keep progressing.
“We improved the car all the way through testing and all the way through the Practice sessions so far this weekend, though, it was not quite enough to progress into the second part of Qualifying. Tomorrow will be a long race and I think we’ll be closer to the others than on short runs.
“We’ll look to execute a clean race, try to progress up the field and see where we end up.”
#10 – Pierre Gasly – BWT Alpine F1 Team
“We knew it would not be an easy start to the season and, of course, it’s always a tough one to take when you exit in Q1. From my side, we probably did not maximise everything today in the session. It was a very messy out lap with traffic and the tyres were not in a good window for an optimal lap time. That said, it would have been tough to advance much further.
“We know where we are and the team is pushing flat out and working exceptionally hard to keep bringing improvements to the car. Most importantly, we’re sticking together as a team. For tomorrow, a lot can always happen on race day.
“We will try and maximise everything we have in our hands and get the best from it. We’ll keep pushing all the way.”
