Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

We picked up the pace a little in FP2, but we were not quite there with the car balance on my side. There’s some work ahead of us and I’m confident we can make a step forward by tomorrow.
We were all very close apart from Max and Checo, but I don’t think they had a clean day so it will be interesting.

Overall it was a good Friday here in Zandvoort. It was great to be back at such a demanding and challenging track for drivers and cars, so I enjoyed it a lot.
Performance-wise, it was a clean Friday and we completed the run plan without any issues, both for the long and short runs.
It seems to be tight with our closest rivals, so any performance we can find overnight will definitely help us going into qualifying.

Das ist viel besser als mein Sonntag letzte Woche und auch besser als der Freitag. Es war ein ordentlicher Start ins Wochenende. Wir sind mit dem Auto viel besser zurechtgekommen, weil es eine ganz andere Strecke ist. Es liegt aber noch Arbeit vor uns. Der Rückstand ist nicht so groß, was sehr erfreulich ist, und das Auto fühlt sich nicht allzu schlecht an, also müssen wir weiter daran arbeiten. Die Strecke ist viel aggressiver zu den Reifen, und wir konnten hier und da ein wenig Bouncing spüren. Aber wenn wir über Nacht Fortschritte erzielen können, was wir normalerweise tun, dann werden wir sehen, was morgen möglich ist.

A reasonable day. I think with the different type of track we’re a little bit more back in line with where we’ve been in general - closer to the front, back in the midfield pack. There are some positives. The car is handling reasonably well both in low fuel and high fuel. I think we’re in an okay position. It’s still close, both in front of us and behind us, but if we can squeeze a bit more out of the car overnight, into qualifying tomorrow, then we can give ourselves a good chance of scoring decent points on Sunday.

Das Auto funktioniert besser als letzte Woche um diese Zeit, und morgen wird es eng zugehen, McLaren wird vorne dabei sein und Aston Martin ebenfalls. Wir wissen, dass das Qualifying unser Schwachpunkt ist, und das Rennen uns entgegenkommen wird. Unsere Rennpace sieht ziemlich stark aus - aber man muss in der richtigen Position starten. Es war heute schwierig, weil die Zeitmessungsbildschirme ausgefallen sind, so dass wir nicht genau sehen konnten, wo unsere Long-Run-Pace liegt, aber wir wissen, dass sie relativ gut ist. Wir sind am Freitag so nah dran wie schon lange nicht mehr, das ist vielversprechend für morgen. Das DRS in der Steilkurve ist ziemlich cool. Es ist unglaublich, wie viel Grip man hier in der Steilkurve und in Kurve 3 hat. Man wirft das Auto in die Kurve hinein und es greift einfach - das ist ein tolles Gefühl.

We had a strong day today around a track I really like. This place is quite different to Spa – which is much faster – and we were strong there as well during Friday practice. It is a case of having to wait and see whether we can carry this momentum into qualifying tomorrow. If we can maintain our strong progress, then we should be in a good position to fight for points in the race.

It was a decent Friday for us. It is a very different circuit to what we experienced last weekend in Spa. It’s a fun place to drive Formula 1 cars around, it’s like a rollercoaster with all of the bumps. The car feels good so far and I think we’ve seen a lot of track evolution today as it was quite dusty across the circuit this morning. We’re going to evaluate everything now, but we are pleased with our progress so far.

We missed out on valuable time in FP1 and then the balance wasn’t great in FP2. In an hour-long session you can’t really change much on the car, so we just had to deal with what we had. Today wasn’t great but we’ll have a look at everything overnight, for sure we can do better than this. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the time difference, there are a lot of things that we can improve on, we’ve got FP3 tomorrow morning to try out a few things ahead of qualifying.

It’s good to be back in Zandvoort at a track I enjoy driving at with its unique undulation and layout. Our Friday ended with both cars in the top ten in both practice sessions and that’s a decent start to our weekend. Tonight we’ll need to look at and try to find the areas where we can improve. We’ll also approach tomorrow with good understanding on how the tyres are behaving, especially since we have tested the hardest compound today and it’s not something we usually do on Fridays. There’s plenty of work to do with the team to be ready for an all-important qualifying session tomorrow.

It was nice to be back on the track, it’s a good time for sure. It was fun. Unfortunately, we lost a bit of track time due to an oil leak in FP2, however, looking at Lando’s pace, it was promising. We made a few changes for FP2 and it looks like that’s worked, so we’ll have confidence going in that direction overnight. It’s just a case of putting the lap together, which I’m confident of tomorrow. All in all, I think it was a good day for the team and we’ll just clean it up tonight.

I think we’ve had an ok day, up until that last stint in FP2. I was struggling with a lack of grip during my long run in FP2 and then unfortunately, I hit a gust of wind and lost the car, going into the gravel trap. Overall, I’ve not felt that comfortable with the car today, but we’ve gained a lot of good data across both sessions, so we’ll go away tonight and look at this to try and put it altogether for tomorrow.

Things are very marginal and Ferrari seem to be very strong around this circuit so, as I predicted, it is going to be an interesting weekend. It is a pretty challenging track and I think we are lacking speed throughout at the moment, we haven’t been quick in any of the sectors, so there is analysis to be done. We haven’t been as happy as we were in Belgium so there are things we need to look at to make sure we pick up on everything to be in the mix for quali. I got a lot of traffic today, I got one of the Ferraris on my fast lap and I couldn’t get a proper read on my soft tyre unfortunately, without causing an incident. Degradation seems to be pretty high on the long runs so it will be interesting to see what we are able to do with the strategy. We certainly need to improve for qualifying tomorrow.

I’d call it a clean day. The car felt good from the get-go, and it was definitely nicer to drive compared to Spa plus it’s a bit more competitive which is nice. I love coming here, it’s such a pure, old school racing track and you really have to drive the car around here, instead of the car driving you around. It’s definitely a good, fun place to drive a lap but maybe in the race it’s going to be a bit more tough as overtaking is still a bit difficult it seems, but for sure we’ll have a lot of action compared to last year.

It was a bit of a tricky day for us today. FP1 was pretty busy, and there was plenty of traffic, but I never really felt on top of the car in either session. Looking at the times, I think our long-run pace looks pretty good, but we still need to focus on our single-lap pace. I am not really happy with today’s result – I think there is more pace in the car that we can find – but hopefully we can take a step forward overnight and hit the ground running in FP3.

Of course, today was quite a change from the last time I raced here; the track layout back then, for starters, was the old school one, while now there’s a lot of banking, and it’s overall different driving on it in a Formula One car. In terms of learning the track, I think today was a really smooth day: we didn’t have any issues and, while we still haven’t got the best balance for the car yet, we will make sure to find it ahead of tomorrow. Zandvoort is a high-downforce track, and it’s always quite dirty due to the gravel and being next to the beach. Once again it will be super tight in the midfield, but we’re still there: we just need to find a few tenths ahead of qualifying and we’ll be through.

It’s not been a great day for me really, I’ve not felt that happy with the car in either session. We also had to make some changes to the car at the start of FP2, which unfortunately cost us quite a lot of track time. So far, it’s been quite challenging, so we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us tonight and tomorrow, but I’m sure we’ll find some solutions and feel more confident heading into Quali.

Whilst it wasn’t great today, it felt okay out there, despite being quite windy with a high downforce circuit. The cars that are quick is opposite to last weekend, so it’s really different in terms of requirements for us. Ultimately, the track is just not suiting us today so it’s not easy, however I think we know where we need to improve so it’s all about trying to get it done for tomorrow, knowing how important qualifying is. Hopefully we can make some changes that will improve our overall pace across the weekend, so that’s the goal.

We got some clean running, which is always a positive, but it was quite a tricky day. It was quite windy and this may have contributed to making the balance of the car feels a bit inconsistent: whatever the cause is, we have to figure out how to improve tonight so to find a bit more for qualifying. Grid position will be important on this tight track and I expect everyone’s setup to be a bit skewed towards single-lap performance: in the end, the challenge is the same for everyone so we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

It was great. It’s a really cool track and it’s really challenging as well, so it’s nice that we go to places like Zandvoort where you really feel exhilarated, and that’s certainly the case. I’m looking forward to getting some more laps in tomorrow, I’ll sleep on the laps I got today, and get more out of it tomorrow.

Today was a really tough day for the team and especially for me. Obviously FP1 is difficult to judge as the track is completely different going into the weekend. It’s very windy out there and some corners are more affected than others. All in all, I struggled with a lot of different things and need to work on finding the right rhythm with driving and balancing the car. This is a track that requires a lot of commitment and you need to feel everything so I have a lot of homework to do tonight so that I can push the car more confidently the rest of the weekend.