Camara disappointed after crashing in debut Qualifying session at Interlagos

Rafael Camara says he is "disappointed" with his errors during an eventful Qualifying debut in difficult conditions at his home race in Sao Paulo, but feels "it was a positive session" overall.

Camara survived spinning and hitting the wall in pouring rain during Q1, before going off into the barrier to bring out the red flags in Q2, but qualified 13th fastest in his first F1 Qualifying session and will start the race from P11 due to grid penalties ahead of him.

The Brazilian rookie was unexpectedly put into the car this weekend after Esteban Ocon’s abrupt departure, having already been signed up for Haas next season.

Speaking after Qualifying, Camara said he was aiming for a clean race on Sunday.

The heavy rain and standing water on the track caused challenging conditions for all the drivers, something Camara said he struggled with. "That was a tricky one," he explained. "I'm okay. It was just a bit unlucky, I think, in the last corner, getting the lock-up and then after trying to release to make the corner, but it was really not possible.

"And yeah, in a way, [I'm] a bit disappointed with the mistakes. I know for the team it's not what they want, but overall I think it was a positive session.”

There is a chance Camara could score points on his F1 debut from where he starts on the grid, and he will have huge backing from his home crowd, but the 21-year-old says he just wants it to be incident free.

“We don't want to crash tomorrow," he said. "I think we just try to have a clean race, but I think the approach is just prepare as much as we can – go into the data, go to the engineers, and see what we can do best for tomorrow and make sure that we are ready for all the scenarios.

"I mean, there are a lot of things to do in the race, but [we will] just try to be as much ready as we can so we can do a good race.”

It was a good Qualifying session for his Haas teammate Ollie Bearman, who will line up in P6 on the grid.

The Briton survived an off-track moment of his own but ended up as one of the midfield drivers to benefit from the conditions, which mixed up the usual order, and grid penalties ahead promoted him even further.

“Yeah certainly a crazy session," he said. "I learned a lot from my first rodeo here two years ago, and I did a much better job. The team did a better job too on the wet tyre – when to push and when to cool.

"We did well, and it’s a shame about Q3. I think, compared to our competitors, we just struggled to put the tyres into the correct window, and I just didn’t have any grip. As soon as the rain came, it was game over.

"So yeah, I’m happy with the job we did. There’s a bit more out there, but that’s okay. We’ll get them tomorrow."