Pierre Gasly secured his sixth top-six start of the season in Austria on Saturday, but the strong performance came amid some "weird" data and correlation issues identified by AlphaTauri before qualifying.
At the outset of F1's second weekend of racing at the Red Bull Ring, Gasly did not feel comfortable onboard his AT02, with his car's balance appearing out of sync with its setup.
Gasly therefore head into the Saturday afternoon session a bit confused and uncertain of the outcome.
"I must say I'm always happy to be sixth," said the Frenchman after clocking in P6, just 0.058s behind Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas. "We qualify right behind the Mercedes.
"I think it was a very strong job, especially after practice, I didn't feel so comfortable this weekend for some reason in the car.
"There were a couple of weird things we were seeing on the data and going into quali we had a bit more unknown than usual - that's why I'm really pleased.
©AlphaTauri
"We still managed to make it work and looking at the gaps it's really, really close. We're only a tenth away from P3, which is good.
"So we need to keep pushing, because there might be opportunities in the season, as Norris showed today. It's been a long time since we saw a midfield car in second position. So that's good."
Gasly elaborated on the discrepancy between his car's handling and what he was expecting.
"More in terms of balance, a lot of differences which didn't really correlate with the setup we had," he explained.
"So we don't really have the answers. And that's why going into quali unfortunately, we didn't have time to really understand. We'll have a look after the weekend if there was anything a bit funny.
"On my side, it does feel quite a lot different, which is odd. For Yuki [Tsunoda - team mate] it is still the same, and then we get quite opposite car balance.
"So that's why it's a bit strange. There must be a few things we will understand with a bit more time."
Gasly said that Pirelli's softer tyre selection for this weekend had required some adjustments.
"Clearly with the C5 compound it's different, the temperatures are a bit different, the wind was a bit inconsistent as well which made it difficult," he said.
"But nevertheless, we still qualified P6, and that's the positive. Now we need to make sure we do more than one corner tomorrow."
Tsunoda, who qualified an impressive P7 just behind Gasly, confirmed the feedback disparity between himself and his teammate, which only added to the team's confusion.
"I was really happy because in FP3 we had completely opposite feedback and that makes the team a little bit confused because it was really the complete opposite," said the Japanese rookie.
"For example in Turn 1 he [Gasly] had a lot of oversteer but I had a lot of understeer. I don’t know where that came from, and every single corner we had different issues which is a little bit unusual."
But overall, Tsunoda was happy with his best performance in qualifying to date in F1.
"Best qualifying so far and also the pace was there already from FP1 for the team, so just from my side I put it all together," he said.
"I’m happy with my lap as well, I couldn’t use a bit of slipstream and that cost us a little bit on the straight but I’m really happy with the lap time and will just aim for the points tomorrow."
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