2016 Chinese Grand Prix – Saturday
April 16, 2016 by Daimler![2016 Chinese Grand Prix – Saturday](images/articleimages/chinese-grand-prix-2016-saturday-02-400.jpg)
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It was a really bittersweet day for us. Nico did a monster lap in Q3 – he saved it all for his final run and really did a fantastic job to put the car on pole. But I'm sorry for Lewis. He had an uphill battle with his gearbox penalty and that became a mountain to climb after he wasn't able to do a timed lap during qualifying. It was interesting to see that the old qualifying format actually delivered a pretty mixed-up grid today: Daniel Ricciardo will be starting from the front row and hopefully he can make his car pretty wide, because we definitely didn't see the full pace from the Ferrari drivers in Q3. There will be a mix of tyre strategies at the front, with Nico starting on the Soft compound, those around him on SuperSoft, and Lewis charging from the back. There will be plenty to keep an eye on tomorrow afternoon. The first key point will be the start and we have seen already this season that the new rules are making things much more variable from race to race. There will be lots of opportunities to do something different on strategy, so I think we should expect an action-packed afternoon. Paddy Lowe, Executive Director (Technical) A very eventful qualifying session. We erred on the side of caution with an exploratory first lap on the intermediate tyre. But, as it turned out, the track was almost entirely dry from the outset – with the exception of two patches along the start / finish straight. During that initial out lap, a problem unfortunately occurred on Lewis' car which we later identified as a failure of the MGU-H. It's a shame for Lewis and we apologise to him for setting his weekend back. With one car remaining, we used the SuperSoft to get Nico through an unpredictable Q1 session and then ran the Soft for his first run in Q2. The logic here was to then have the Soft as a hoped-for race tyre in the event he could pull out a good enough lap to make it into Q3. He did that in impressive style, which stands him in good stead for tomorrow. In the Q3 shootout, Nico made a few errors on his first run but put together a fantastic lap on his second, taking a well-deserved pole. It will be an interesting race tomorrow, with Nico on a different compound to the cars around him and Lewis starting from the back. We still remain hopeful of getting both cars on to the podium, so that's the target.
posted on conceptcarz.com
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