Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

The car was decent, but it was not an easy day on track with the weather conditions, as we did not get so much consistent running. I think we understood what the car needs, and now we’ll take it from there and hopefully we can improve it. I believe we can and we must. My pace was better on a single lap than on a longer run. We need more grip which is not so easy to find. But we can balance the car a bit more, which should make the long run better. I am pretty confident we can make a step forward, but for the race it could be quite difficult, in line with what we saw at the last two races. Now, we must focus on our own work and make sure we are in better shape for the rest of the weekend and then we’ll see what it brings tomorrow and on Sunday.

The car was decent, but it was not an easy day on track with the weather conditions, as we did not get so much consistent running. I think we understood what the car needs, and now we’ll take it from there and hopefully we can improve it. I believe we can and we must. My pace was better on a single lap than on a longer run. We need more grip which is not so easy to find. But we can balance the car a bit more, which should make the long run better. I am pretty confident we can make a step forward, but for the race it could be quite difficult, in line with what we saw at the last two races. Now, we must focus on our own work and make sure we are in better shape for the rest of the weekend and then we’ll see what it brings tomorrow and on Sunday.

Overall, it was a positive day for us. Our qualifying pace looks good, while we do have some work ahead of us to improve our race pace. I am glad that I had the chance to get some more practice driving in wet conditions today and pushed to go out on track as soon as possible in FP1. Although these conditions were not really representative, as it should be quite a bit warmer tomorrow and on Sunday, it was good to see that our pace was there. I think there is some room for improvement and we will work on that tonight. We will head into qualifying knowing that I will be taking a grid penalty, but this changes nothing for me in terms of my approach. I will still push to the maximum and aim to secure the best starting position possible.

“It was a bit of a messy day because of the changing weather and I think the lap times are not really representative as the track and ambient temperatures are pretty different to what it looks like for tomorrow and Sunday. It’s positive that the car was straight away working well, there are of course always things you can improve but it was a good start and we have a good basis for tomorrow. The top three teams are all very close to each other so let’s see how everyone responds to the track and temperatures tomorrow. I also don’t mind whether the rest of the weekend is wet or dry as I think we can be competitive whatever the conditions.”

Das erste Training wurde ein wenig vom Wetter beeinträchtigt, aber die Vorhersage für das Wochenende sieht besser aus. Ich konnte am Vormittag ein paar Runden zurücklegen und einige Systemchecks erledigen, aber das war es auch schon. Im zweiten Training waren die Bedingungen viel besser. So konnten wir am Nachmittag ein gutes Programm absolvieren. Zunächst sammelte ich Daten auf den harten Reifen, aber auf der grünen Strecke war das mit dieser Mischung schwierig. Danach wechselte ich auf die weichen Reifen, wodurch sich das Fahrverhalten ganz schön verändert hat. Mit Blick auf das Gripniveau haben wir gute Fortschritte erzielt. Auf meinen schnellen Runden hatte ich etwas Verkehr und die Rundenzeiten an der Spitze liegen sehr eng zusammen. Deshalb glaube ich, dass wir konkurrenzfähiger sind, als es momentan den Anschein hat. Ich denke, dass sowohl Ferrari als auch Red Bull sehr stark aussehen, aber wir sollten ebenfalls dabei sein. Aus diesem Grund freue ich mich auf einen guten Kampf.

Ich bin in der nassen ersten Session nicht viel gefahren. Der Nachmittag verlief aber schön glatt. Wir begannen mit einer guten Basis und nahmen in der kurzen Zeit, die uns im Training blieb, ein paar Anpassungen vor. Heute Abend werden wir weiter am Feintuning des Autos arbeiten. Das wird entscheidend, da uns nur zwei Trainings bleiben, um es für das Qualifying richtig hinzubekommen. Es ist also etwas kompakter als sonst und wir müssen bei den Änderungen ein wenig präziser sein. Es war jedoch ein guter Auftakt und wir sollten weitere Fortschritte machen können.

“I think we had a pretty decent Friday – we were P6 on low fuel in FP2. That’s almost the best we’ve been all year, at least since Monaco, I think. That’s nice. It’s been very cold today and it’s not going to be cold on Sunday. The cold conditions help us, so, that’s a bit of a bummer. I hope the cloud cover can stay and we can have some cool track temperatures as it definitely helps us. We’ll take it as it comes though. The whole of the midfield is within half a second, it’s so tight, I’m P6 and there’s just four tenths down to P16.”

“The day began with some wet running, which was actually quite beneficial. I haven’t done too many laps in the rain in this car, so it was nice to learn a bit in that aspect. The start of the afternoon was quite difficult on the Hard tyre and cool conditions, which meant grip levels weren’t quite there. We put the Soft on after that and found a bit of time and that was positive. Our long runs seemed okay and I think we’re in a pretty good place.”

„Trotz schwieriger Bedingungen war es ein positiver Start in unser Wochenende. Es ist gut, den Tag in der Top 10 zu beenden, auch wenn es nur ein Trainingstag war. Sicherlich haben wir bezüglich der Abstimmung noch viel Arbeit vor uns. Aber wir werden versuchen, uns weiter zu verbessern und dann sehen, wo wir morgen landen. Im Qualifying wird es – wie immer hier – sehr eng zugehen. Eine Runde ist derart kurz, dass nur eine Zehntelsekunde einen Unterschied von mehreren Plätzen ausmachen kann: Man muss seine Runde absolut perfekt fahren, um sich vorn zu platzieren. Wir werden sehen, welche Bedingungen morgen herrschen, aber wir können zuversichtlich sein, mitmischen zu können.“

“Today was ok. FP1 was tricky in the wet and obviously it wasn’t ideal crashing but it was quite a minor off. I just lost it on the brakes and it happened at the worst part of the track. The guys did a great job to get the car ready for FP2, and the car felt ok on the prime tyre. Then I switched to the option and got a flat spot so that was my session over really. I think our performance looks quite good though and our race pace is strong so we can take positives from today, I just don’t know where I’m at because I haven’t had a clean session. This track is quite difficult, and with the weather and rivers on the circuit it’s not easy, but it’s fun and I’m enjoying driving it. I need more laps and I’m just chipping away at it. Interlagos is old school so you need to build up to it and get into a rhythm.”

“Quite a challenging afternoon for us in the dry. I never felt 100 per cent comfortable in the car. We’ve got homework to do tonight as we weren’t very competitive either on the short or the long runs. “On the positive side, this morning we were able to do quite a lot of running in the wet. We looked quite competitive and we gathered valuable date in those conditions. I look forward to tomorrow – there’s a big margin for improvement.”

“I think today, on the whole, was pretty decent. For a Friday, I’m quite happy. It was a short morning with just one run on the Intermediates; it felt a bit limited but still good to be out on track and get a feel for the car in the wet conditions. The afternoon was a little rushed, quite intense with the red flags, but the car felt good. We had some minor balance issues, but the baseline seems fine and the pace is there.”

“It was good fun driving in the wet this morning, it’s been a while since we’ve had these kinds of conditions, so it was good to get a feeling in the wet with the Toro Rosso. Everything felt ok this morning, but it won’t be so useful as the rest of the weekend should stay dry. In FP2 we had good pace on the Prime tyre, then on the Soft I hit some traffic, so I wasn’t able to get a good clean lap. I think it’s going to be tight tomorrow between P6 and P15 as there’s only three tenths in it, so we need to make sure we have a clean run and put everything together for Qualifying because the midfield is very close. It’s going to be an exciting day tomorrow. Towards the end of FP2 we had an issue with the engine, so we had to stop a bit before the end of the session which meant we lost a few laps on the long run, but that’s how it is sometimes. We’ll bounce back tomorrow as we still have enough laps from today to make the right choices for the rest of the weekend.”

„Ich denke, wir können mit unserer heutigen Arbeit zufrieden sein. Wir hatten ein intensives Programm, und wir drehten auch einige Runden bei Nässe – das war eine gute Erfahrung. Was die Zeiten betrifft, ging es nachmittags wirklich eng zu. Ich meine, das war ein Vorgeschmack auf das, was wir im Qualifying zu erwarten haben. Wir müssen konzentriert bleiben, alles bündeln und morgen aus jeder Kurve 100 Prozent holen. Wie immer ist es unser Ziel, Q3 zu erreichen. Ich bin zuversichtlich, dass dies in Reichweite liegt.“

“In the end we had a productive session until the moment when the car switched itself off. We now need to find out what the problem was, but until then I think it was a solid session. We understood the track well and the requirements needed for tomorrow to go faster, so we will work hard overnight and try to improve tomorrow.”

“With a wet start to the day, we didn’t do much work in the morning session and I didn’t set a time. As the track began to dry this afternoon, we managed to complete some good runs, even with the red flag interruptions. We will use the information we have to make some of the set-up decisions tonight. The weather in Brazil is unpredictable and the conditions can change quickly, but it certainly looks brighter over the weekend. The battle in the midfield is very close and one tenth can change your life so it’s very important to deliver clean and tidy laps in qualifying. That’s the key to a strong weekend.”

It was my first time driving a Formula One car in wet conditions, so it was a new experience for me. I was hoping it wouldn’t rain as much as it did, but I was very happy to go out and get five or six good pushing laps. Overall, it was a very valuable session for me, I got the car back in one piece, so I felt I did a good job.

“It was very close today, very exciting. Kevin (Magnussen) was P6 and he’s fourth and a half tenths ahead of me and I’m in P16. We had a small issue on the car in FP2 unfortunately, we need to resolve that for tomorrow. We know what it is and we’re going to sort that out. Hopefully the car is better tomorrow. The qualifying pace was good today though, the race pace was alright. We’re expecting the track temperature to be a lot hotter on Sunday and that will change the picture a lot. We just need to make sure we work on that and don’t get surprised by the change of track temperature. Conditions were in our favor today, it’s going to change, but we’re going to try as hard as we can.”

“There’s not much for us to take away from today because the track conditions meant we did limited running. The rain was very heavy first thing, but it did clear up as the morning went on and we managed a couple of laps on the intermediates. But as we saw from what happened to Albon, the track was still slippery and we had to be cautious. It was very cool today compared to what we expect tomorrow and Sunday, but we will look through the data tonight and see what we can learn. Final practice is always important, but it will be even more so tomorrow.”

“A tricky day with FP1 being wet and it’s the first time here for me in those conditions. It took me time to get used to everything compared to the other drivers who have experienced conditions like that here in recent years. “It’s not the easiest track to be on the limit straight away, and it’s easy to make a mistake. It’s been a day of trying to improve small things, my driving and the set-up. I think the coming days will be dry, so we’ve got some good learning points for the car and for myself.”

It wasn’t the best day. We were struggling with the temperature to get the tyres working and it was very tricky out there. If we get the tyres in the window, I think the lap time will improve quite dramatically. Hopefully with higher temperatures and a bit more grip, it should come towards us. We’ve definitely got work to do tonight and let’s see what we can do for tomorrow.

I was on my first lap around Interlagos, I lost the car in a nasty way in-between turns two and three. Initially I did not understand the accident. However, once I reviewed it, I understood that a Haas had gone off the track a few seconds ahead of me, which pulled quite a lot of water onto the track. It was my first lap on the hard tyre, so with all of these factors, I ended up in the wall. It was unfortunate, but this is motorsport and it can be frustrating at times.