Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

“It has been a positive day overall. There was quite a bit of concrete dust on the track this morning, which, in combination with high temperatures, gave us a challenge in terms of grip. The conditions improved throughout the day and I felt more comfortable in the second session. We made a good step between FP1 and FP2 and will have to continue working hard to repeat this tomorrow. It is still difficult to say where we will stand in qualifying. We expect our competitors to be strong and will do our best to secure a good result.”

“It was an interesting session: the track was rather slippery at the start and I know it’s going to improve bit by bit as the weekend progresses. We struggled again with the tyres, especially in terms of performance over a long run. We will have to work on that in the third free practice session, because having a good grid position is vital. At the moment, I’d say we’re not the quickest, especially over a single lap, where our main rivals seem to have a slight edge. We lack grip in the slowest corners and I’m still not getting the feeling I want from the car. We will try changing some settings to find the right balance, which is eluding us at the moment.”

“It was an interesting session: the track was rather slippery at the start and I know it’s going to improve bit by bit as the weekend progresses. We struggled again with the tyres, especially in terms of performance over a long run. We will have to work on that in the third free practice session, because having a good grid position is vital. At the moment, I’d say we’re not the quickest, especially over a single lap, where our main rivals seem to have a slight edge. We lack grip in the slowest corners and I’m still not getting the feeling I want from the car. We will try changing some settings to find the right balance, which is eluding us at the moment.”

“We can be pretty happy with Friday. The run plan was ambitious, doing a lot of out-ins, getting in a lot of tests for the aerodynamicists, a lot of components back-to-back and trying to find the right compromise. In that sense, I think we’re working in the right direction and it’s good to have new parts to try in search of performance. “I felt comfortable with the car from the morning session and that obviously helped to put together a decent lap and to have good pace on the long run. That was encouraging, but today is only practice, so we need to keep our heads down and work hard to see if tomorrow we can confirm the pace of today.”

“It’s not been too bad today. Our running on low fuel was good, on high fuel we just need to make sure we’re on top of the tire management, that’s still the main thing to work on. We’ll do what we can tonight to learn what we need in order to get more from the soft tire here. I’m not sure – in terms of the qualifying pace, how much more there is to come, hopefully a bit. It was running smoothly today, we had no major issues. Our main focus is on the race pace.”

Am Vormittag lief alles glatt. Die Strecke war am Anfang noch sehr schmutzig, aber das war für alle gleich. Im zweiten Training habe ich einen Fehler gemacht und das Auto beschädigt. Die Jungs haben hart gearbeitet, um es zu reparieren, aber dafür war nicht genug Zeit. Ich kann mich nicht daran erinnern, wann ich das letzte Mal eine gesamte Session verpasst habe. Es ist definitiv nicht toll, das Training aus der Box verfolgen zu müssen. Es fühlt sich an, als ob man beim Schulleiter im Büro sitzt und sich wünscht, wieder in den Klassenraum zurück zu dürfen. Es war ein einfacher Fehler. Ich bin mehrere Runden auf dem Medium-Reifen gefahren und versuchte, das Limit zu finden. Leider bin ich darüber hinausgeschossen. In Kurve neun kam plötzlich das Heck und ich legte einen langen Drift hin. Ich hegte die Hoffnung, dass ich die Mauer nicht berühren würde, aber so etwas passiert eben manchmal. In solchen Fällen musst du das direkt abschütteln und wieder aufs Pferd steigen. Zum Glück hatte Valtteri heute ein gutes Training. Dadurch haben wir viele Daten, die wir analysieren können. Die Jungs werden heute Abend ganz sicher großartige Arbeit bei der Reparatur leisten und dann werden wir morgen zurückkommen, um einen besseren Tag hinzulegen.

“We did a lot of work today and looked quite competitive, but it’s tomorrow and Sunday that matter. The track was really dirty all day long and so there was big track evolution with every lap – right up until the end of the session. We ran several different packages on the car, collecting the information we needed and analysing which parts are working the best. The main job tonight is to choose the best solution so that we can be even more competitive tomorrow. It’s always a really tight grid here and all the midfield teams look very closely matched once again. The performance of the tyres and the high degradation is also going to play a big factor on Sunday and should make it more interesting.”

“Today’s been pretty good and we achieved a lot of running. We seem to be close to where we’re aiming but still want a bit more. We looked at the pace of a few others and know that there is still a bit of time to be found. Both my long runs had quite a different balance so we’ll work out which one works better and go from there. We went through quite a few items and that was positive for us. All in all, a good day where we put in a lot of laps around a really fun race track; I like it here!”

“I’m reasonably happy with today. It’s always fun around here and I really like the track. It was a decent Friday, the car feels good, but we’ll have a look at a few things and make some tweaks. Our short run pace was fine, it’s tight in the midfield but we ran quite early in the session and maybe others had the advantage of the track improving. Our long runs were also OK, but graining on the Soft is something to look out for over the weekend.”

“It has been a promising start to the weekend here in Montreal - certainly better than Fridays at recent races. The car feels alive at the moment, which is a good base on which to start building, as both the performance and the high fuel runs seemed promising. No doubt there are still some things we can do to improve, but we are definitely in the fight. We just have to keep working on things tonight, improving the details to find some more lap time. The field is very tight, with only a couple of tenths between fifth and tenth, so it’s going to be really close tomorrow.”

“Overall it wasn’t a great day for me. I got to grips with the track reasonably quickly – it’s not the most difficult to learn – but I struggled to make any advances. I’m struggling with some things that I’m finding difficult to improve on. “There’s potential – Carlos is extracting a lot more out of the car than I am. So the pace is there in the car but I’m just not doing a very good job. I’m going to try to improve on that tomorrow so things should be better.”

Today we tested a lot of things in FP1 and FP2 but at the moment I seem to be lacking a bit of pace, so we need to analyse everything tonight and come up with some solutions for tomorrow. We had high tyre degradation but maybe that will make the race interesting on Sunday as also other teams were struggling with the tyres so we are in the same boat. I didn’t see exactly what happened with Max, I was preparing my lap and starting a new push lap, when they told me he was coming so I tried to push and be out of his way. It’s still early to say what’s possible in qualifying tomorrow and we have one more practice session, so we need to do some work tonight. I don’t know if we will be able to compete with Mercedes and Ferrari but we will try everything we can.

“For me FP1 was fine and I felt good in the car. It maybe didn’t look easy from the outside in FP2 but from my side the car also felt good. I couldn’t finish the push lap in FP2 which was unfortunate. As I arrived at the last chicane I was in the wake of Pierre’s car and I understeered into the wall. It’s a shame and we missed a bit of running but when we were running the pace was pretty decent. Of course we want to do better and I think the slippery track was also not in our favour today but the long runs look competitive, so I’m happy about that, even with the disrupted running and we just have fine tuning to do for tomorrow. It’s very dusty out there and I had to use four or five tear offs when usually I don’t even use one, it’s a bit too much, especially off-line, but hopefully conditions will improve tomorrow.”

“It was a tough day for us. We need to try and do our homework tonight and come back with some solutions tomorrow. I think the balance isn’t too bad, we’re just lacking a bit of pace, so we need to understand why. We’ve had tough days before, so I’m confident we can analyse the data from today and figure out where to improve for tomorrow.”

“It was an interesting couple of sessions today. This track always makes you study hard overnight on Fridays, so we will do our best to put together what we learned in FP1 and FP2 to try and find that little extra step tomorrow that we were missing today. We need to analyse where we were losing to our competitors – it’s the small things that can make a big difference – and if we manage to work well overnight we should be OK. This track may not suit us as well as previous tracks, but we can still do a good job for the rest of the weekend.”

“Q: Kimi, talk us through the day. Kimi: A practice day. Q: What was the grip out there? Kimi: Not very good. Q: The new power unit from Ferrari – what difference does it make? Kimi: We’ll see. Q: You had to do the job as Antonio had an issue… Kimi: We started okay, it’s still not the best feeling with the car, but we tried a few different things for the second practice. We still have a lot of work to do and if we can go a few tenths quicker then we can move up some positions as it is very tight in the midfield. Q: What about the tyres? Kimi: Friday is Friday. Saturday is Saturday.

“It’s not been ideal. I generally struggled with the pace and the grip – in the rear end mainly. The balance has been inconsistent, and around here that doesn’t bring confidence. We’re going to try to understand what’s happening. Kevin’s been very fast in FP2, which is good to see, so I’m sure we’re going to find something and get up there tomorrow.”

“It was a tough day for us, in which we haven’t completed a lot of laps. During FP1, I got a bit too much of the inside kerb on turn eight and that pushed me a bit too wide on turn nine. I lost the car on exit and there was the smallest touch with the wall, but enough to cause damage. FP2 was pretty much lost, as we only went out to check the car, so we lost a lot of track time today. We have a lot of work ahead of us tonight.”

I enjoyed driving at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve; a new track for me. Our performance was as expected, the low fuel pace was on plan with our high fuel slightly better. It was a bit slippery at times, as anticipated, but overall, I enjoyed it. We have some work to do tonight to see what we can achieve tomorrow.

Today was my first FP1 of the season and I felt well prepared as I have had three full in-season test days with the team. For me, everything went very well with a smooth session and we ran a good programme. The track conditions were tricky due to the dust, but I kept the car out of the walls and got some good laps in to gather data for the team. It’s a very special feeling to drive in front of your home crowd. Montreal is the city that I was born in, I have a lot of family and friends here, so it was a special feeling pulling out of the pitlane.

The track today was quite slippery. I didn’t expect such conditions as we are sliding quite a lot. When I started the first few laps in FP2 there was a lot of dust, but these conditions were the same for everyone. It is good to be here, I came with a positive mood and there are no dramas but of course there are no big surprises. FP2 we managed to complete what we planned, now we have to do some homework, squeeze the knowledge from Nicholas, George and myself, to try to speed up a bit for tomorrow.