Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

Zu Beginn war es nicht einfach - am Vormittag hatten alle etwas zu kämpfen, weil die Strecke viel rutschiger als sonst war. Aber der Kurs entwickelte sich schnell weiter und ich konnte von Runde zu Runde große Fortschritte spüren, besonders in den Kurven. Je besser die Strecke wurde, desto besser fühlte sich die Fahrzeugbalance an. Trotz der Probleme mit der Balance war das Auto auf Anhieb schnell - das ist immer ein gutes Zeichen. Wir haben zwischen den beiden Trainings gute Veränderungen vorgenommen und im zweiten Training fühlte ich mich viel wohler im Auto. Deshalb fiel auch die Rundenzeit besser aus. Es ist sehr warm und wird sogar noch wärmer werden. Aus diesem Grund werden die Reifen am Limit sein, besonders am Sonntag. Auf die gesamte Runde gesehen haben wir noch mit der Balance zu kämpfen. Das werden wir uns heute Abend ansehen, um uns für morgen zu verbessern.

Heute war es sehr heiß, aber wir konnten dennoch den Großteil unseres Programms absolvieren. Die Fahrzeugbalance war etwas knifflig, vielleicht hat das mit dem neuen Asphalt und den hohen Temperaturen zu tun. Ich glaube, dass die Streckentemperatur heute 55 bis 60 Grad erreicht hat. Alles in allem war die Pace des Autos sehr gut. Wir müssen nur noch etwas Feintuning an der Balance betreiben. Im zweiten Training bin ich keine sehr gute Runde gefahren. In Kurve drei hatte ich plötzliches Übersteuern, was ich gut abfangen konnte. Aber schlussendlich hatte ich danach ein kleines Problem mit der Power Unit und musste an die Box kommen. Davon abgesehen ist der Tag sauber und ohne größere Schwierigkeiten verlaufen.

“I am generally happy with how our sessions went today. The feeling in the car was good and we tested some new parts. We are confident but we still have a lot of work ahead of us to put the car in the best condition for a strong qualifying. Our competitors are strong and we must focus on ourselves to really put everything together for tomorrow. It was fun to drive on this circuit again. It is a bit of a different track to the others because the walls are so far away that you can push and try more during practice. I look forward to being back in the car tomorrow morning.”

”I would say we have a lot of work ahead of us since not all the new parts we have here performed exactly as expected. I think we have a lot of data to analyze overnight, to possibly have a bit better performance tomorrow. On the Canada matter I would say we felt that we didn’t share the opinion of the stewards during the race in Canada and we thought that we could bring something new. It is disappointing that the matter is not going any further but that is what we have now and so we have to move on.”

“It’s been a good day, and to be honest a much better start to the weekend than in Canada for me. It’s a cool track, Turn 11 is the best where I hardly touch the brakes. Position-wise it looks quite promising, although in Canada the car was very quick on Friday, but even though we were still quick, the rest of the weekend we dropped back slightly, so we’re cautious. “We tried a lot of stuff today and hopefully we can put all of that together on the car tomorrow and we can have a positive day. As a team, we’ve done a good job, the pace looks promising and if we can improve the car a little we should have a good qualifying. There’s a lot of improvements to be made and we just need to keep pushing.”

“We still have some work to do but we looked reasonably competitive against Ferrari. Mercedes are still too quick but we will look at the data and see what we can improve for tomorrow. The tyres are not that easy to predict and it seems that the softest compound is not a lot faster than the medium, which will make things quite interesting in qualifying. All in all, it wasn’t a bad day and we were able to make lots of changes, especially this morning, to fine tune our set-up for the rest of the weekend.”

“An interesting day overall with a lot of testing. I think the first question mark was the tyre performance today, as it was quite different to other races and a very different feeling across all three compounds. I’ve been testing some experimental things today and they don't always work to perfection. However, I was still P8, so it shows we have potential for tomorrow. “Running very different set-ups compared to the other car means we have gathered a lot of valuable data for the future. Tomorrow we’ll go back to more normal settings, take things that we've learned today from Lando’s car, and hopefully have a strong quali for the team.”

“Today was good. We tested a lot of new parts on the car and now I need to sit down and analyse with the guys what worked and what didn’t. Regarding the new Honda engine, it’s difficult to say much as I’ve just come out of the car but we will look at everything tonight and push it more tomorrow. The general feeling was good, the reliability was completely fine and in terms of performance, we need to see if it’s delivering what we expected. The conditions and also the tarmac made it difficult with the tyres and grip. In general it’s a bit different to what we expected coming into the weekend but it’s the same for everybody. In FP1, there was less grip initially but this afternoon it seemed a bit better so let’s see if it keeps increasing like this. The soft tyres seemed to fall away so we need to see what’s best in terms of strategy and what we can do for Sunday.”

“It’s easy to see what the lap times tell, but as usual you cannot read too much into Fridays. In general, I think it was a positive day. We have to keep working to get more out of the car and we’ll see where we end up in qualifying tomorrow.”

“I think it’s been a pretty good day. It was very hot on the track, so the tires were getting hot, but the car seemed to be working alright, on both low-fuel and high-fuel. So, that’s encouraging, and we’ll try to build on that, we’ll try to learn why that is today and try and make sure it also works on Sunday. We’re in the mix but it’s the race pace we’re really focusing on.”

“We can be pleased with our first day on track and with finishing close to the top 10. The midfield is still really tight, so we will need to work a lot tonight and find the last bits of performance, but it was a positive start. Tomorrow is another day so we need to focus, work hard and try to have the best car possible for qualifying. Q3 remains our target.”

“Today was positive, although maybe the timesheets don’t reflect how the car actually felt. Across all our runs today, the car seemed good. Our Soft tyre run in qualifying trim was slightly tricky, especially with high track temperatures and maybe we missed out a little there. It didn’t feel that far off, and I’m certainly optimistic for tomorrow. The upgrades seemed positive and we have some data to go through to find further improvements.”

“Today wasn’t the easiest day for us. We made a very good step from FP1 to FP2, although it was hard to get a full understanding of where the tyres were because the track was so hot today. We’ll have a look into the data we gathered and see where we can improve for Qualifying. As always, it’s very close in the midfield, so we need work hard to find those extra tenths of a second to get us into Q3 tomorrow.”

“It was a solid Friday in the car, we worked through what we needed to and tested out the new parts in the afternoon. It felt positive and encouraging. Conditions were very hot, which meant it was challenging at the wheel. All in all, it was a decent day where we collected a lot of data, especially on the long runs, which were good. We have more work to do on the low fuel pace. This circuit is quite demanding with different corner variations throughout. As ever for practice, we have some things to look at to find that sweet spot.”

“All in all, today wasn’t too bad as we had a productive day. Even though it wasn’t easy to understand everything about the tyres, we still managed to learn quite a lot. FP2 was pretty clean and we were able to get a few things done to see where the car is. For me, the focus was mainly race preparation, but we completed a few short runs as well to see how the car performs in those conditions. I think today we covered everything we needed to, now we need to understand what we can do to improve the car further.”

“The new tarmac was very dirty this morning and there was big track evolution during the day. That’s why we saw so many cars struggling this morning and a few spins. We worked on understanding the current package because we don’t have big upgrades for this race. So we just tried to find a balance that I’m happy with and evaluated some of the things we’ve added to the car over the last few events. I can feel the potential in the car and we are making improvements, but we need to make a good step tonight.”

“We didn’t start with the best baseline set-up, I could feel that in the first run. We then had a water leak and that was the end of FP1. When you’re not starting with a car that’s bang on target, it just puts you a little on the backfoot, it was not ideal. Then in FP2, we had that front lock-up on the first attempt, that’s not understandable at the moment. The tire was damaged, so we had to abort that run. I tried as hard as I could to carry on as I knew I only had one set left after that. We moved onto the soft, and by the end of the high-fuel run we were in a better place. It was a more positive end to the day.”

“It was a challenging afternoon and we are further back than we want to be at the moment. Compared to where we were on Friday afternoon in Canada, it looks like we have a lot of work to do overnight to understand where we can make up some ground. This place is a demanding track for the car and the long corners are tough on the neck, but it is what we train for and I am feeling pretty good. We need to find some pace for the performance runs, but the car felt better during the long runs and I’m confident we will be able to push when it counts on Sunday.”

It was good to have another FP1 session so close to my drive in Canada. I still had the rhythm of a Formula One car and I feel more comfortable. However, this morning the track conditions were tricky making it difficult to maintain consistent grip in the tyres from lap-to-lap. All in all, I was pleased with how today went, I kept it clean and got the car back to George in one piece.

Today was as expected and I enjoyed it. Missing FP1 wasn’t ideal but I know the track well, so I got into the rhythm pretty quickly. Circuit Paul Ricard has a nice flow to it and the car felt alright. Overall, I enjoyed the laps out there and the pace was what we expected. We must keep on improving the car balance to make the most out of the package this weekend.

It was a usual Friday, nothing stands out. There were no surprises, so it was okay. We did a lot of work and tested a few data gathering items for aerodynamic purposes. The track was not bad, FP2 it was rubbering in, so the grip increased, and it was quite good fun to drive.