What they say

Albon bounced back from his crash yesterday and equalled his best qualifying position of the year with fourth on the grid.

Truthfully in terms of the confidence side I was quite happy with it. It was a silly mistake to begin with yesterday so I knew I could put it behind me pretty quickly and focus on today.

FP1 was pretty decent, FP3 was pretty decent, so fourth didn’t seem unrealistic. It felt like something which I was thinking was definitely achievable for qualifying. But of course, it was nice to have it. And of course, the car’s been feeling good this weekend, especially since today really it’s kind of clicked a bit more. Obviously fourth is nice, hopefully we can be a thorn in the Mercedes strategy and see what we can do.

On my side it’s just firstly you’ve got to own up to a mistake and it’s more just about putting it behind you really. Obviously you apologise but at the same time you focus on the next day and a lot of the time is spent on OK, we had the crash, but you don’t really think about that, you don’t focus on that. You’re thinking about how was the car before then and what areas do we need to work on so we can hit FP3 running? That’s kind of the mindset. There’s no point dwelling on it or or regretting or thinking you could have done this and that, because that’s not very helpful.

Links

More motor racing links of interest:

Qualifying (Williams)

“I was pretty pleased with my lap, but there was a big gap to George so it shows that the potential of the car is there. There are a few set-up differences between us as we went in slightly different directions, so that could account for some of the time difference.”

Front row lock-out for Mercedes in Bahrain (Mercedes)

Andrew Shovlin: “We’re happy that we have both cars starting on the Medium tyre but we’re expecting to see some differences in the strategy tomorrow as a number of teams have carried an extra Hard tyre into their race allocation. Our long runs on Friday were distinctly average so we’ve made quite a few changes coming into today and hopefully we can keep the tyre temperatures under control during the race.”

Up for the fight (Ferrari)

Charles Leclerc: “After final practice I didn’t think we could have ended up higher than 12th, but looking back at how quali went, I feel I could have done a better job here and there, so I cannot hide the fact that I’m disappointed not to make it to the top 10.”

Marshals, officials and medical staff honoured over FIA Volunteers weekend (FIA)

“While working as a pit lane marshal during a DTM round in Hungary 2018, László was struck by a race car which resulted in doctors having to amputate one of his legs. A year on he returned to the pit lane in an WTCR Race in Hungary 2019 and also worked as pit lane marshal during the Formula One Hungarian GP this year, where he could contribute to the FIA’s Covid-19 related protocols.”

Keith Huewen steps down as BT Sport’s MotoGP lead commentator (Motorsport Broadcasting)

“F1’s record-breaking 23 race calendar for 2021 has been the main talking point in recent weekends, but Moto GP too has a record-breaking season scheduled, with 20 race weekends on the agenda. Whilst broadcasters are adapting behind the camera because of the pandemic, they also need to adapt in front of their camera.”

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