Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

It felt good to drive the car today and it is nice to see both cars high up on the timing sheets, especially after only three days of Testing. The team is working together well, and we are still learning a lot about the new car.
I think it will not be clear who is on top until after this weekend and probably into the first couple of races at different tracks. For now, we are just concentrating on ourselves and trying to find the right balance with the car.
It is clear that the team have made some really good progress over the winter break; the car was feeling great to drive and I am excited to get back behind the wheel tomorrow.

It was a difficult start to the day. In FP1 we couldn’t get the balance right, which was a bit odd as we didn’t experience this in testing. In FP2, the short run laps weren’t too bad and the car felt a bit more connected and with the long runs, the pace was good. Overall the car isn’t too bad in the long runs. Form FP1 to FP2 we went in the right direction, I just need to find my rhythm again. The Aston Martins are looking competitive, you could see that already from testing. There’s still a bit more work to do, we know we have a competitive car, it’s just about putting it all the pieces together.

It was quite tricky out there, the temperature from morning to afternoon changes quite a lot so the only representative session was this evening. We have some work to do over one lap and that should automatically put us in better shape for the long run. We explored the car a bit today and generally we have a good idea on how to set-up for tomorrow. I think everything is close at the top, certainly Aston Martin and Ferrari look strong, and I think it is going to go down to who puts the best lap together in qualifying and who has the better race pace on Sunday.

Our first day of free practice went OK. We completed a lot of laps and I feel more and more comfortable in the car, which is positive. It is still difficult to tell where we stand as everyone seems to have been running very different plans, but we are focusing on ourselves and will keep pushing in the right direction.

One lap pace is fun but if this is where we are come Sunday, that’s where the gold is, that’s where it matters. That’s where we still have a lot of work to do and some homework – to find pace and work on degradation. It’s going to be difficult but it’s the same for everyone, we need to come up with the best compromise set-up for one lap and for the race. Overall, it’s been a good Friday with things to take away to build on and progress.

It was so great to be back in the car today and get my first proper laps of 2023 in. It has only been 13 days since my accident and at that point I was not sure I would be back in an F1 car so soon, so be here with the team is amazing.
We lost a little bit of time in FP1 with an ignition issue, but once that was fixed we ran well and collected some important data to work through tonight. There are a few things we need to evaluate overnight and we will prepare as best we can for the first qualifying session of the season tomorrow. We have our feet on the ground, and we are realistic with our expectations heading into tomorrow.

It feels great to be back in competitive action and feeling the demands of a Friday Practice day. In testing there’s obviously a bit more time to learn about the car and make changes, but today was a reminder of how fast paced everything is and how concise and accurate you have to be during the sessions. I’m satisfied with how we’ve worked today. We ran through a busy programme, and we’ve built up a good picture on car set-up in the conditions we expect to see for the rest of the weekend. I’d say Free Practice 2 was much more comfortable. The car felt good and there’s more to come from us this weekend. I’m excited for Qualifying tomorrow.

Im zweiten Training hatten meine beiden vorderen Bremsscheiben unterschiedliche Temperaturen. Die linke war kühler und die rechte wurde wärmer, so dass die Lenkung beim Bremsen nach rechts zog. Dadurch konnte ich nicht so viele Runden fahren. Das war nicht toll, aber es ist kein großes Problem und wir können es beheben.

Durch das „Bouncing“ verlieren wir im Vergleich zu den anderen Autos an Abtrieb, was die Sache für uns viel schwieriger gestaltet. Wir bluffen nicht, wie die Leute vermuten, aber wir werden so hart wie möglich arbeiten, um das zu überstehen und das Beste herauszuholen. Im Moment werden wir hier nicht um den Sieg mitfahren. Red Bull liegt 0,8/0,9 Sekunden vor uns, und Ferrari hat eine halbe Sekunde Vorsprung, so dass wir uns mit den Verfolgern herumschlagen müssen. Ich bin immer noch ruhig und versuche einfach, mein Bestes zu geben und alles aus dem Auto herauszuholen. Es ist nicht ideal, aber wir werden als Team an einem Strang ziehen und versuchen, das Problem zu lösen.

I think it’s been a reasonable Friday. We put the car in a reasonable place, and I got a bit more comfortable with it both in low-fuel and high-fuel running. We have a lot of lap time to find to be competitive and to fight with the guys we want to fight against, but we’ll keep working hard overnight and look ahead to tomorrow.

Today has been smooth overall. We have been able to complete every task we had set for ourselves ahead of both sessions and the car felt good, it was comfortable straight away. As predicted, everyone is pretty close in the midfield: we must do some homework overnight, looking through the data gathered today, and try to make some gains as every little fraction of a second will matter. I feel we are in a decent spot, in terms of pace, so it’s really a matter of working out a few small details and making sure we are ready for the race.

After a busy pre-season test, I’m pleased with how the first Friday practice of the season went, and it feels great to be back on track in the environment of a race weekend. We saw today that the car has gained performance since the test and we have a clearer picture of where there are improvements to be made. Things are going in the right direction and we’ll be discussing at length tonight how we can get ready to have a good first qualifying of the season. There’s more to come from us and I’m feeling ready.

We’ve had a solid day and I feel already confident with the car, especially with the setup we had in FP2. The car behaved as expected, so no surprises there, and now we can just focus on fine-tuning it ahead of qualifying tomorrow. We looked consistent also in our long runs, which was a good practice for the race. As expected, the midfield is extremely close and a small gain or loss can mean a big difference in position: finding a spot in the top ten won’t be easy but it’s a realistic target for us – with both cars. Making predictions is going to be really difficult, but it should make for an exciting day tomorrow.

Es geht nur um die Rundenzeit und wir sind sicher noch nicht da, wo wir sein wollen. Wir haben Fortschritte bei der Lösung einiger unserer Probleme gemacht, aber die Pace ist im Moment nicht da. Wir müssen uns heute Abend die Daten ansehen, um zu verstehen, wo wir mit dem Auto zu kämpfen haben. Wir haben noch viel Arbeit vor uns, um den Rennwagen dorthin zu bringen, wo wir ihn haben wollen, aber wenn ein Team das kann, dann sind wir es. Heute war es windiger als in der vergangenen Woche, zudem sind wir zu anderen Tageszeiten gefahren und haben viele Dinge am Auto ausprobiert, um die Performance zu verbessern. Deshalb müssen wir jetzt viele Faktoren abwägen. Wir setzen wirklich alles daran, die Leistung herauszuholen, von der wir glauben, dass sie vorhanden ist. Aber im Moment können wir sie nur schwer abrufen. Jetzt gilt es, die Daten zu studieren und das Beste aus dieser Situation machen.

A trickier Friday than we initially expected. The balance was different and we were changing the car through the sessions to try and correct its main limitations. It’s only Friday and I’m confident we can analyse everything overnight and take a step forward tomorrow.

My first official Friday done. I feel like I'm making progress, which is good. There are some improvements to find but I feel like I’m getting there. I’m still making a few mistakes here and there, so I’m not 100% happy with my driving but I feel like we’re in a reasonable place. We’ll see where we are properly tomorrow but so far, it’s been good. I’ve enjoyed my first official Friday as an F1 driver.

FP1 was looking pretty good for us, we’ve been testing quite a bit today and we’ll put it together tomorrow. Some of the things the team have been working on between the test and now, we’ve tried them out and got a few answers. There’s a lot more to try – it was only two practice sessions – but I think we’re in a decent spot. I don’t want to jinx anything, but as usual, it will be very close, and it could be anything.

FP2 was much better than FP1. We’ve still got a bit of work to do but we’re close. If you look at AlphaTauri and Haas cars, on race pace we are close to them, so that’s who we’re fighting and let’s see tomorrow if we can get those little bits together to get them. Because of the way deg is around here, race pace is a bit more important than qualifying pace. Ease of overtaking is quite high, so if you’re the quicker car you tend to get past. You’re setting up the car for Qualifying, but with one and a half eyes on the race! There’s a bit of an unknown to race one; reliability across the paddock is less than the final races of the year and some teams get on top of their packages earlier than others. Realistically, maybe we don’t have the quickest car on the grid, but we can do a better job than others and maybe finish out of sequence.

Today was not the easiest day. The performance itself doesn’t look good compared to our competitors so far. Obviously, we don’t know what programmes they ran, but on our side, there are limitations that we have identified. There is still one more practice session tomorrow and I'm feeling optimistic. We've definitely made a step forward compared to last year, so I'm confident we can continue moving in the right direction. It seems our long-run pace is better than our short-run one, which is maybe good for Bahrain, but there is performance missing. We’ll shift our focus now to qualifying, to improve as much as possible for tomorrow.

It was the first time I participated in a FP2 session as a full-time Formula 1 driver. Overall, I am satisfied with the work and progress we made. The conditions from FP1 to FP2 were quite different, but we worked well together as a team. We found ourselves a little on the back foot, but I'm confident that if we stick together and continue improving on the areas we believe we need to find performance in, we can make a step forward. It’s hard to make big changes in one weekend, however, we are aware of our weaknesses compared to our competitors. This track may not suit the characteristics of our car, but it’s early days. After a couple of weekends, we'll be able to have a clearer picture.

It was nice to experience a full day. As expected, as the temperature came down, the car really came to us. I was quite surprised with how much grip we picked up this evening which is something I need to maximise a little bit better. FP3 tomorrow is during the day when the temperatures are high so today was our best read going into Qualifying tomorrow. We're going to dig deep into the analysis tonight and see what we can go for in Qualifying. In general, it was a good first full day in the office.