VIDEO – Milesi’s reaction after his 4th place in Hyperpole in Austin

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We find ourselves with Charles Milesi, excellent fourth in qualifying in Austin with theAlpine #35! alpine autohebdoinside racing motorsport

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Charles Milesi, a fourth place in Hyperpole with theAlpine, it's a very good performance. Did you expect it?

No, I think the whole team didn't necessarily expect it. Let's just say that we've done a hell of a job since the start of the weekend, in FP1, in FP2, and above all we've made a nice step forward between FP3 and qualifying. I felt more and more comfortable with the car. It's the first time I've been here, so of course, I'm learning a lot too. Between qualifying and Hyperpole, I managed to find another two or three tenths here and there to get to this fourth place.

You even had the second fastest time at one point. Did you feel in the car that it was the right lap and that it had worked really well?

So yes, it was a good lap, even if I made two mistakes in the last sector. In turns 12 and 15, I lost a good tenth and a half because of that. So I think that, I'm not going to say easily, but we could have gone for P2. But there you go, it's the same for everyone. The other drivers could have improved on certain corners too. We're not going to complain. Fourth is the best qualifying of the season for us in this first year.

It's a circuit where it's difficult to do the right lap. With all these bumps, you see a lot of apexes where the car can go quite wide. How complicated is it to put it all together?

With the bumps, it's always more complicated. We're trying to find consistency on the brakes with the hybrid system that we have in the car. It's always complicated to get the right sensations on the brakes, but it's just work with the team to get there. Here, we arrived at something that was pretty good. Tomorrow for the race it will be different again. So I think that to stay in the top 5 it will be complicated. We will try to do the best we can.

We know precisely that at Alpine The goal is always to finish, to learn, to store things. But when you qualify so well, is it difficult to keep these expectations, to keep your feet on the ground before the start of the race?

Yes, because we still have data for the long runs. The fact of not having tested before, I think that it did not ultimately penalize us that much for qualifying, but on the long runs, it will be more penalizing. Knowing that today is the part on which we struggle the most, this understanding of the tires. It is complicated for everyone to have an accurate reading of all that. I imagine that tomorrow, with different temperatures, perhaps a little rain at a certain moment, we will always have cards to play. In pure performance, today, we are not in the top 5.

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