Kimi Antonelli: We did everything right

      Kimi Antonelli will start from pole for the fifth time this season – in qualifying at Silverstone, he was the fastest of all. Moreover, the main competitors of the Italian Mercedes driver turned out to be the Ferrari drivers, not his teammate – George Russell showed the fourth result.

      Kimi Antonelli (1st): “I was a bit nervous because I don’t like to be the first to go out for the final attempt, but I managed to drive my lap very carefully. To be honest, everything went quite well. There were difficulties due to the wind; its gusts were very strong and came unpredictably, but we managed to conduct the qualifying well, and I’m happy to have secured pole.

      Moreover, we didn’t change the car settings at all. Everything depended on the choice of brake balance, differential adjustments, and driving, you know? We did everything right; we managed to find the right settings, and that helped me in qualifying.

      Of course, the competitors will try to make my life difficult in tomorrow's race, so it won’t be easy. Two Ferrari cars will start behind me, and of course, they will interact during the race. They are capable of a good pace, but our pace during the sprint was quite confident.

      I hope that tomorrow we can maintain this level, so we can hope that we will have a good race.”

      George Russell (4th): “I don’t know what caused the exit in the first part of qualifying – I’ve been racing at this track for 12 years and have never locked up the brakes in that corner before. But we made some changes to the settings, probably making them more extreme, but everything happened strangely.

      We also don’t know why we have speed issues on the straights from the very beginning of the weekend. We were losing compared to some other cars with Mercedes engines – in the last sector, the maximum speed was 6 km/h lower, in the middle sector – 3 km/h lower, and that already leads to a loss of two tenths per lap.

      We don’t know what this is related to yet, but the team is trying to figure it out. This morning it seemed to us that we had identified the reason, but then it turned out that it wasn’t that. All of this also doesn’t make the task easier, but if we can at least eliminate the speed deficit on the straights, we’ll see what we can do.”