In the Mix After Tight Qualifying in Bahrain

Just half a second separated the top nine on the final timesheets, with both drivers setting their best lap on a new set of the Soft compound tyres at the end of Q3 - George with a 1:29:485, and Lewis with a 1:29:710.

Both cars navigated the first two sessions, though there was an anxious wait at the end of Q2 as Lewis and George were the last two cars to cross the line, and both were outside of the top 10 starting their final runs.

That meant we have had both cars in Q3 for the past 12 seasons and sets up an exciting battle tomorrow night, with little to choose between the teams during all four sessions so far this weekend.

"Good work everyone, it's an important one tomorrow," said George on the radio to the team at the end of the session.

George Russell

Everybody at the factory has done a great job to give Lewis and I a car that we are much happier with. It’s a base that we can build upon.

We’ve still got some catching up to do to be at the very front, but starting P3 for tomorrow’s race is a good place to be.

It’s clear how tight it is between a number of teams, including ourselves, Ferrari, the McLarens, and Aston Martin.

It is exciting knowing that if you put the whole lap together and find a tenth or two, that will add up to several positions on the grid.

Since the test, the whole team has been working incredibly hard to fine-tune the set-up and make improvements.

We’ve clearly made a big step forward in our single lap pace. Hopefully we haven’t compromised our race pace, but we will see tomorrow. I think we’re likely to be in a close fight for the podium positions behind Verstappen.

Lewis Hamilton

I struggled throughout Qualifying as we have in the past couple of years.

The car is feeling really great, but I just went a little bit in a direction to help my race pace. I wasn’t feeling as comfortable with that yesterday so that was the focus. I’ve definitely sacrificed more single-lap performance than I hoped too but I hope that pays off tomorrow.

It’s a lot of work to do to get past a lot of quick cars that are starting ahead of me, but I’m sure it’ll be fun.

George’s position and the pace he showed today really highlights, and is a real testament, to the team.

It shows just how hard everyone has worked over the winter. It’s amazing for us to have a car that we can fight with. It reignites the fire and the flame within us drivers. For me today, Bono and everyone else did a great job.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

Yesterday we looked slightly better than today on our single-lap performance. We intentionally tried to set the car up for tomorrow’s race though, so we hope we’re in more of a sweet spot for the Grand Prix tomorrow.

The set-up changes we made certainly contributed to the drop in our performance today. At the start of Qualifying, we wondered if we had sacrificed too much for tomorrow but in the end, it wasn’t too bad. P3 is a good place to start but we were still three tenths off pole position.

Behind Verstappen, the gaps are so close with several other teams. Just a couple of tenths makes such a big difference. It’s about the absolute tiny margins and if you find even small gains, then you are right in the game.

We hope that tomorrow will be a little bit better but we are still learning so much about this car.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

It's been much harder to get the lap-time out of the car today than yesterday. We made some changes overnight to try and improve the long run and that has likely cost us some single lap pace.

It was very encouraging for the team to see George put it in P3 at the first race though. Lewis didn't have a clean run through the sessions and he'll no doubt be frustrated by that as he'd looked to be very quick yesterday. Nevertheless, we expect him to have strong pace in the race tomorrow and he's no doubt relieved to see that the W15 has way more potential than the two cars that came before it.

We're looking forward to tomorrow. It's a race where you can overtake, so good race pace is really important. More than anything though, it will be interesting to see how the car performs and where everyone falls out in terms of pace.