Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

I felt good in the car today. It's always nice to be the fastest in any session, but it's only Free Practice so we will keep our feet on the ground and stay focused on ourselves.
We don't know what the others have been doing in terms of engine modes and fuel loads, so we shouldn't read into the times too much, but it's still been a positive day.
We've had no issues with the car, completed our programme, and continued to hone the setup of the AMR24 to extract more performance.

Es hat Spaß gemacht, wieder auf der Strecke hier in Dschidda zu fahren. Es ist ein wirklich schneller Kurs, der sehr viel Spaß macht. Wir hatten das Auto nicht im perfekten Fenster und FP2 verlief ein wenig durchwachsen. Die Zeiten sahen auf einer schnellen Runde gut aus, aber wir sind uns noch nicht ganz sicher, wo wir bei den Long Runs stehen. Wir haben im FP1 viel getestet und verschiedene Abstimmungen an den Autos ausprobiert. Für das FP2 haben wir dann einige Änderungen vorgenommen, um mehr über den W15 in Erfahrung zu bringen. Es ist noch sehr früh in der Saison. Es ist erst das zweite Saisonrennen und die zweite Rennstrecke, auf der wir gefahren sind. Wir müssen weiter auf unseren Erkenntnissen aufbauen, und jeder wird über Nacht hart arbeiten, um mehr Performance herauszuholen. Es geht wieder einmal sehr knapp zu, also warten wir ab, was wir morgen erreichen können.

The practice sessions today have been pretty good overall. The pace has been good on both the long and short runs and they have prepared the track well for a street circuit. Overall, we learnt a lot and there are always things you look to do better on a one lap performance. We know some other teams have a bit more power on the one lap so we’ll look into the data to try and improve our overall performance and extract as much as we can from this. Looking to qualifying I am feeling good; it will be tight but we are happy with our performance today and looking forward to tomorrow.

The track had good grip to start with and we can expect quite a lot of track evolution throughout the day tomorrow. All in all, everyone is really close in times so it will be tight and interesting to see who extracts the maximum from their car and comes out on top.

I think we are in a good place with the car and performance, it was a very positive Friday. We just need to do some fine tuning but I am happy with the window we have the car in, we understand what we need for tomorrow. We have a very good idea what direction we are going to take to make the car faster and if we can do that it is going to benefit the long run and the qualifying. I am very pleased with today. It is a matter of putting everything together in qualifying, that will be the main target and we will see what we are able to do. Sector One is super-fast and can be scary if you get some traffic there, so we need some clean laps tomorrow, I am looking forward to Friday.

It's always a lot of fun to drive here. It's such a high-speed circuit and a great challenge.
We had a positive day. We've shown good pace in both sessions and on different tyres, but it's only Free Practice and there are a lot of unknowns in terms of the programmes the other teams were running today.
We'll look into the data tonight and aim to build on what's been a solid start to the weekend as we move towards Qualifying.

It has been a very difficult day for me as I haven’t fully recovered from the sickness that has kept me in bed for the last 24 hours and I still feel very weak. Anyway, I made it to the track and managed to maximise the time with the car and the team. This track has a lot of grip and the high speed corners makes it very demanding for cars and drivers. Even though I couldn’t push to the limit today, at least we completed the programme and hopefully tomorrow I will be fully recovered and we can focus on qualifying and the race.

Es war ein schwieriger Tag. Mir fehlte ein wenig das Vertrauen in das Heck des Autos. Wir haben von Session zu Session an der Abstimmung gearbeitet und das Auto ein wenig verändert. Das Hauptproblem, mit dem ich sowohl im FP1 als auch im FP2 zu kämpfen hatte, war aber immer noch das Heck. Ich hatte einige heikle Momente auf der Strecke, und auf einer Hochgeschwindigkeitsstrecke wie dieser muss man volles Vertrauen in das Auto haben. Das ist noch nicht ganz der Fall. Wir werden heute Abend die Daten analysieren und sehen, wie wir uns verbessern können. George war heute eindeutig zufriedener mit dem Auto. Wir sind in leicht unterschiedliche Richtungen gegangen. Hoffentlich können wir daraus lernen und die richtigen Lösungen finden.

It’s great to be back in Jeddah. It’s such a different style to Bahrain with the high-speed sequences. Looking at the pace, we seem to be slightly more competitive than last week, but it is only the beginning of the weekend and there’s a long way to go. The feeling inside the car is still challenging, there are some limitations, but, equally, there are positives for us to take forward. I’m staying calm. We have a good base to work from and there’s certainly more things we can do to extract more performance from the current package here. I’m looking forward to tomorrow when it counts.

An up and down first day, I would say. There’s been good moments where we’ve looked quite quick, other moments not so much. It’s a little bit difficult to tell where exactly we are but I think we’re somewhat in the mix again, which is positive. We have some fine tuning to do for tomorrow, but I think we look ok.

Overall, today was a good day. There are still a couple of areas to look into tonight, but the car is feeling ok in terms of balance. The data we gathered in both Practice Sessions today is important and will help us find more time for tomorrow. I lost out on Q3 by seven-thousandths of a second last week in Bahrain and that shows it’s a very tight field, but this keeps the team and myself motivated and focused. Tonight is about finetuning and putting it together for tomorrow and the race on Saturday. Let’s see how we go.

A reasonable day. A bit of a better feeling than we had in Bahrain. There were certain corners where we’re struggling to get the balance in the right window. There’s a few bits we need to improve but, on the whole, I think it was a pretty decent day. Some work to do but still a good start to the weekend.

It was good to be back on track in an official session. Today’s conditions were quite different from what we experienced during testing, which made it fairly interesting: we had some issues in the morning, but our afternoon went quite smoothly, and we were able to tick all our boxes. Now, our focus is on getting everything ready ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying: it’s difficult to evaluate the true pecking order, as FP2 didn’t show the true potential of our performance and, similarly, we don’t know what everyone else was doing. It’s a very close midfield, once again, and we might have a tight qualifying session.

The car felt good and from the moment we hit the track, it’s been in a good place. FP2, we made some changes and most of them worked, with only a couple of exceptions, so we’ll work to find a sweet spot for tomorrow. The race runs look sensible, so I’m pretty optimistic. We’ve got a good car and like always, it’s going to be close but I’m enjoying it out there, it’s a fun circuit. We’re going to aim for the top of the midfield and hope to take advantage of any opportunities we can.

It’s been an interesting day here in Jeddah and I’m happy to be back driving at this exciting circuit. We had two solid sessions, lots of laps completed both on low and high fuel, so lots of data collected and learnings to take forward. We have some work to do to improve the car and better the set-up as best as we can for tomorrow. There are a few things at this stage that we must work on but it’s been an encouraging day. We will see what we can do in Qualifying tomorrow night.

It’s been a good day for the team, and I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction. The circuit here in Jeddah is hugely different to Bahrain, so it’s like re-learning the car to an extent, but it’s been great since we put it on the ground this morning. We’ve made some small changes to get the car closer to the perfect window, and I’ve been building up each session and feeling more comfortable with every lap. Looking forward to FP3 and Qualifying tomorrow!

I think we had a decent day – nothing spectacular on pace – but again the car seems okay on long runs, more so than low-fuel. We need to pick up the pace a little bit there, so hopefully we can do that but it’s very tight, so even finding two-tenths and you’re close to the top 10. It’s so close, I think we could get close to the top 10 with an amazing lap and we hook up the balance in the car. We want to get a decent qualifying position, but the race is the important one so that’s still what we’re focusing on. It’s all to play for tomorrow.

It’s very different to Bahrain – a different circuit, different sensation and feeling, but ultimately it’s still very quick here. I think from a running perspective it was fine, a day with no problems so that was good. The feeling in the car isn’t amazing, there’s room for improvement – especially over one lap – although I think we’re really close together in the midfield. Small things can make a big difference. It’s the normal learning process on the first day where we learn things and hopefully can put it all together tomorrow. Right now, I think it looks more challenging than seven days ago but you never know, there are very small margins.

It was an FP2 session of two halves. We were competitive on the first set of the soft compound but instead, I struggled a lot with the second set. The track was getting better, and everyone was improving, but I really struggled to improve my time because I encountered some traffic and didn’t feel that bite. The second set was a little bit of a mystery, so there’s something to learn from that, but looking at the first set, we don’t have to be too discouraged. We’ll get back to work tonight and understand how we can put it all together. Looking at tomorrow, it’s really hard to predict the outcome because the standing has been very close today. It’s such a different circuit compared to Bahrain; the surface and the way the tyres behave are different. It’s a great track, so I think qualifying will be a fun session tomorrow.

It was good to finally get the season underway with the first practice sessions of the year and get some more mileage in. I reckon we learned a lot since testing last week, working around and discovering more about the setup of our car: still, there is some extra work that needs to be done, especially on the single-lap performance. This’ll be our main task overnight and during the final practice session tomorrow morning. It seems we are still quite close to our main competitors, and it’ll likely come down to a handful of tenths in Qualifying tomorrow.