Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

"Vor dem ersten Rennen weißt du einfach nicht, wie es sein wird. Du weißt nicht, wie du dich körperlich fühlen wirst, du weißt nicht, wie die Reifen auf die Strecke reagieren werden." "Aber der Anfang war heute gut und wir konnten alles erledigen, was wir uns vorgenommen hatten. Im zweiten Training ging es bei den Abständen zwischen uns ein wenig enger zu, aber gerade das ist ja das Aufregende daran. Es ist eine größere Herausforderung für mich, alles zu geben und noch ein bisschen mehr aus dem Auto herauszuholen. Es war ein sehr schöner Tag. Wenn das Wetter wie heute ist, ist der Albert Park ein wundervoller Ort, um dort zu sein und zu arbeiten." "Die Reifen scheinen definitiv nicht die gleichen Schwierigkeiten zu haben, die wir in Barcelona hatten. Dort gab es Blasenbildung, aber hier fühlte es sich viel normaler ein. Natürlich ist das Auto in diesem Jahr schneller als im letzten, deshalb fühlt es sich überall besser an." "Die Kurven elf und zwölf sind verrückt. In dieser Kurve bremsen wir überhaupt nicht mehr, das ist irre. Soweit ich weiß, wird es morgen und am Sonntag regnen und ich bin auf diesen Reifen noch nicht im Regen gefahren. Es wird also interessant."

“For me this has been a positive start to the weekend so I am really happy about that. The car has behaved well on this track which is always pleasing after only running in Barcelona to date. Of course we have only done two practice sessions so it is still hard to see who is strongest and how we will finish come race day. It is a bit of a guess when you come to the first circuit of the season. It takes at least two or three Grand Prix to understand what is going on, it then also depends on everyone’s development rate throughout the year. Race pace looks good, I think there is definitely some room for improvement and Mercedes look pretty strong, but I’m not concerned with how it looks at the moment. A little bit of rain over the rest of the weekend would help us out. Being wet means performance is less engine dependent and makes the power tricky to control. Our car is usually strong in the wet and I enjoy myself so fingers crossed we get some rain.”

"Das erste Training war knifflig, da wir ein paar Schwierigkeiten mit der Aufhängung und dem Benzinsystem hatten. Dadurch war es schwierig, einen guten Vergleich zu ziehen." "Ich glaube aber nicht, dass diese Schwierigkeiten ein Grund zur Sorge sind. Wir haben es einfach nur während des Trainings festgestellt. Im zweiten Training fühlte sich das Auto viel besser an, aber wir können noch mehr herausholen." "Zudem muss ich mich beim Team bedanken, denn wir sehen zu diesem Zeitpunkt stark aus. Es war also ein guter Anfang. Es ist gut, wieder auf der Strecke zu sein und zu fahren." "Es scheint richtig eng zwischen Ferrari, Red Bull und uns zuzugehen, aber das war mehr oder weniger so zu erwarten. Warten wir ab, wie es morgen aussehen wird." "Wir haben einige Informationen für die Long Runs gesammelt und wenn es trocken bleibt, haben wir auch einige Daten über die Reifen. Wir haben bemerkt, dass sich hier viele Dinge anders verhalten als bei den Testfahrten in Barcelona. Denn es ist hier viel wärmer und auch der Asphalt ist anders. Wir haben also definitiv viel gelernt und werden diesen Lernprozess morgen fortsetzen."

“It was a pretty normal first day here in Australia”, said Kimi. “Everything felt a bit different from testing, but it’s normal when you are in a different place. The track itself felt much better than last year, in terms of grip. It looks like there are a lot of leaves, but this doesn’t really affect the driving. It’s not easy to find a good set up, but the start today was not too bad. We tried a few things and did our best to improve here and there. We are considering which way we should go and trying to figure out the best way to do that. It’s a normal story, especially at the beginning of the year. Let’s see what the weather brings tomorrow. Tonight we’ll go through all the work we have done today, we’ll pick all the positive things and see what we can do”.

“It’s been a rather dull day of work, like every Friday. We tried to chase the balance because I didn’t feel completely comfortable at first, but I’m not worried about that because I know that if we do everything right, the car should be in better shape. It looks like we are close, which is good news, so we should be able to do something tomorrow. This track is particularly tricky, in that if you don’t nail it at first, then there is quite of bit of lap time to be found, and I think we still have much potential to extract. The car is fine; it’s not where we want it to be yet, but if we keep on working, it should be ok. I really hope to make a bigger step than the others”.

“It’s been a good day. I’m happy with the car and the guys did a great job getting everything ready. We had a successful winter test, and it’s good to confirm that the car is up there on a different track and with different temperatures. Obviously, it’s early stages and we need to keep up the work and keep building everything. There are areas where we can improve the car but, generally, I’m very happy with how today went.”

“The car was ok today but I was definitely happier with the long runs than the short. My low fuel run got cut short by the red flag, but to be honest, after doing about nine turns on that lap I wasn’t fully happy with the balance. I think I would have been a bit quicker than on the soft tyre and moved up from where we are but I still don’t think it would have been a P1 lap time. We still have a bit of work to do but generally it’s not been a bad day. I got a good feel for the car and I think tomorrow is going to be wet so I don’t know how relevant today will be. Looking at the times it’s nice to see that everyone seems to be pretty close and hopefully that’s the reality. It would be great if the top three teams and even Haas can be close as it would be a pretty nice start to the new season.”

“It’s good to be back in the racing spirit, and it’s a nice feeling to be with all the cars on track after the lonely winter tests where you are the only car per team on track and have empty grandstands. “Being the first day of the season, there were a lot of things we wanted to test. However, the weather conditions will be changeable from tomorrow, so we need to be careful with the information we have gathered. “We lost a little bit of time in first practice with some issues but we managed to recover everything in the second session, and now we need to analyse everything to get the best package for tomorrow. The weather is going to affect everyone and we’re used to these changeable conditions here, so hopefully we can maximise every opportunity.”

“I’m fairly positive, but we still have some work to do. I had quite a few abnormal issues today – nothing big – but little annoying issues with small things that were breaking. That stopped us from running as much as we’d hoped for, at least on my side. We got at least one run that was representative where I got to feel the car, and I was happy with the feeling. I’m looking forward to trying again tomorrow. Obviously, we don’t know what the weather’s going to do, but if it’s dry, I have a feeling we have a good package.”

“Today was a pretty good day. We lost a little bit of track time in the first 45 minutes of FP1 but had a very good run after that and got some good learning from the car, which was the most important thing after winter testing. The issues we had weren’t big problems, and we got on top of everything pretty quickly. “We had a very productive day, so I’m looking forward to putting all the pieces together with the set-up for tomorrow and seeing where we’re at. I think we’re in reasonable shape and the feeling in the car is positive – it feels like we’ve got something to work with. Everything is running as we want it to, and we just need to keep pushing forward to gain performance. “The most important thing was to go through our programme and we did that, and I’m excited about the possibility of running in a wet qualifying tomorrow. I think we’re in a very close group with some other teams, and the conditions will make things a bit more difficult for everyone. Hopefully we can benefit from the rain that’s on the radar this weekend and make the most of it.”

“It was a calm and fairly straightforward day for me and that was great to have for the first Friday of the season. The midfield is extremely tight so it’s difficult to say where we’ll be tomorrow. We do need to work on getting the Ultrasoft working a bit better as we didn’t manage a clean lap with it today. Conditions were great on track; it was an ideal day for Melbourne, but I think tomorrow we might have more of a challenge.”

“We achieved a lot today. There were a lot of new parts on the car and we needed to learn quickly. It’s only Friday and I think we can find more performance before qualifying. That’s always been our strength as a team and we need to work hard tonight understanding the data. I said during testing that all the teams are much closer together and if you look at the times it’s certainly the case. We need to be perfect in qualifying because a small mistake will drop you a long way back. ”

“We had a decent amount of work to get through but a reliable car to get all the work done. I wasn’t so happy with the balance of the car on lighter fuel loads, but it felt much better when we went for the longer runs so there’s a sweet spot yet to be found. I would say there’s a decent amount of pace to come when we get the car working as I want it. It’s just general improvement in pretty much every area; the brakes, better balance and grip and the usual things you look for to go faster.”

I think it was a positive day, looking at the laptimes and everything. I think we can improve quite a bit, because we got the red flag and I went back out and did my time on a one lap tyre, so there is definitely a few tenths in that. If you ask me I think we are in a decent position. We don't know where the other cars are on fuel and everything, and we don't know what engine mode people are running, so that is a question mark. It seems like the car is a bit better here than in testing. At the end of the session the engine went into a safety mode. At the practice start seeing the red lights with the halo is fine.

“For the first day of the season it was actually quite a normal day of practice. We had a lot of things to try on the car, but everything went to plan. It was all about learning and understanding the directions we need to take with the new package. We have already seen a step forward in performance compared to testing, but there’ is obviously some tuning to be done. The afternoon session was a bit frustrating because of the red flag and I always seemed to be stuck in traffic. Tomorrow is what counts, though, so we need to make sure we are ready and do our homework tonight.”

"We missed a little bit of track time this morning in FP1 but we made up for the lost time with a good second session. Managing tyres is going to be a big topic for all the teams but we got some good data on both the long and the short runs. It looks like we're in the battle with the midfield, but there's still a bit to improve before qualifying tomorrow."

"The first Friday of the year... it felt good to be back in the car to start the season properly! We tested many things for Qualifying and the Race but we still don't really know what the weather will be like both tomorrow and on Sunday - it looks like it might rain. Let's see how it goes, at least we did many tests and now we need to analyse the positives and negatives from today. I think tomorrow is going to be tight in the midfield, so we really need to put everything together - it can make a big difference on the starting grid."

Both sessions were quite good today. I went through different stuff, going through normal things to understand the car and the track. It’s not easy, but it’s as expected. Overall, everything feels very different to Barcelona. It’s still a bit early to say, but I think we look OK. You get more confidence with every lap and every corner, especially when you try different things. There are still many new things for me to learn procedurally. Q3 is obviously the target, but the midfield is very close. It’s not going to be easy but if we do a perfect job we could be there. We’re improving, but altogether the picture compared to Barcelona looks very different.

“It was a positive day – we completed a lot of laps testing different compounds. We continued developing our understanding of the new car, building on what we learned during winter testing. We still have lots of work ahead of us to get to where we want to be. Today’s sessions were good in preparing us for the rest of the weekend. In any case, it is great to be back racing, and fun to be here.”

“Overall, it has been a productive day for me. There are a lot of things going on that are new – I can already tell that I have learned a lot since this morning. It was my first time driving on this track in Albert Park which was exciting. We mainly worked on finding the best set-up for the car and drove on different tyre compounds today. By FP2, I already felt quite comfortable in the car. I really look forward to being back on track tomorrow.”