Fernando Alonso On The Front Row For Saudi Start

Both Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso continued their fine form from Friday, appearing at the top of the timesheets throughout Saturday’s running. The team added 42 laps of data in the final Free Practice session, before taking to the track to secure the best possible grid position for Sunday.

Both AMR23s comfortably progressed through the first qualifying segment, and made it through into the final part of qualifying as the times closed up across a very tight field. In Q3, Fernando took third position, while Lance took sixth, but had the potential for a bit more.

Fernando Alonso

“All in all we have to be very happy with starting on the first row of the grid tomorrow. It is a very different circuit compared to Bahrain and to see us fighting in Q3 again is a positive sign.”

“The track did evolve during the session, but maybe not as much as we anticipated, especially from Q2 to Q3. Our strength in this package has been on the long runs, so hopefully we can optimise this as much as possible tomorrow.”

“It is very tight between a number of teams so tomorrow will be an interesting battle for sure. But with both cars starting inside the top five positions, our main goal is to come away from this race with as many points as possible.”

Lance Stroll

“The team delivered a really strong qualifying performance today and we have put ourselves in a great position to fight for a good haul of points in the race tomorrow. We were not sure whether the pace we saw in Bahrain would translate to such a different circuit here in Jeddah, but the car felt good and we were able to keep pushing the limits throughout qualifying.”

“My final lap was going well, and I went purple in the first sector, but I made a small mistake at Turn 22 and lost two or three tenths. Still, starting fifth is a good result; we have a competitive race car, and there is all to play for tomorrow.”