De Vries has to say same words again: 'I made a mistake'

Not again. While the pressure on his shoulders is increasing by the week, Nyck de Vries was again unable to put down a strong performance with his AlphaTauri. Although teammate Yuki Tsunoda also failed to get out of Q1, the Japanese did finish (as almost always) ahead of the Dutchman. The latter, not for the first time this season, had to admit he made a mistake, which got in the way of a good result.

Twentieth and last. On the day when there were already rumours of a deadline for Nyck de Vries - he would have four races to start performing better - the Dutchman did himself no favours. "I think we weren't quite strong enough today," was his painful conclusion in an AlphaTauri press release. "Especially as the session evolved, I felt as if we were losing performance."

By 'we', De Vries certainly meant himself too: "In my last run, I made a mistake in Turn 1 and lost two-tenths, which would’ve put us slightly more in the mix. Nevertheless, I don’t think we were strong enough to proceed to Q2. Tomorrow is another day with new opportunities and different weather conditions, so we’ll get another shot at maximising our performance."

Yuki Tsunoda missed out on a spot in Q2 by two-thousandths of a second. "Clearly, the starting positions will make Sunday more of a challenge, but it's a long race here," Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer) said. "It's hard on the car, so we will do all we can with the strategy to progress further up the grid. The focus and preparations now turn to tomorrow’s Sprint Shootout and Race, particularly because of any impact the weather might have, due to the high chance of rain."