Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

That is our first day done on track in Madrid and it is a very cool circuit to drive around. It is a real challenge for us as drivers, with lots of high-speed corners and walls close by. You need to be very precise with your lines and good on the brakes; it is very easy to lock-up as there are a lot of places where you are braking and turning at the same time. It is a fun challenge and one that I am enjoying.

We’ve had a good first day here but there is still lots of work to do ahead of the rest of the weekend. It is going to be difficult to look after the tyres on Sunday and overtaking is likely going to be a real challenge. That makes our single lap work tomorrow morning even more important; we will focus on that overnight but also looking to ensure we have a good race car for Sunday.

It was exciting to drive on the Madrid circuit today. It’s a challenging street track, which is the type I usually enjoy and this one is no exception. I was quite impressed with the amount of grip there already was, considering that this is a completely new track with not much rubber on it so far. Nevertheless, I expect the track evolution to be big over the course of the weekend. Our target was to maximise the number of laps and gather as much data as possible today, to get to know the track and prepare for qualifying, which will likely be the key moment of the weekend because overtaking is so difficult here. I look forward to seeing what we can bring home tomorrow.

It’s a fun track to drive and FP1 was a good starting point for us. As the day went on, we found it a little more difficult to get the car in the right window, so there are a few things for us to look into, particularly around the balance. It’s a new circuit for everyone and we gathered plenty of useful data today, which we’ll go through overnight. There are definitely some positives to take and we’ll work to make a step forward ahead of qualifying tomorrow.

It was a positive first day for us here in Madrid. It didn’t feel like a completely new experience for me, as I’ve become quite used to learning a new track on a Friday this year. We showed good speed throughout the day and we were quick on every lap we completed in FP2. It wasn’t a nice feeling to end the session with a crash. It looked quite bad from the outside, but thankfully the impact wasn’t too heavy and I feel completely fine. There's some damage to the car, so I apologise to the team for the extra work they’ll have to do tonight. Finishing P4 on merit is a great result and puts us in a good position heading into tomorrow. I’ll focus on resetting tonight and taking the learnings from today for Qualifying.

It was very fun driving the Madring for the first time today. It is always an enjoyable experience when you get to try out a new track; this place is particularly challenging, which is good fun as we get to grips with it.

We started well in FP1, and the car was strong from the off. We made some set-up changes for FP2 but I’m not sure they improved the car so we may row back on them overnight. The bigger question from today is the tyre degradation. It was very high in FP1 and, although it was reduced for FP2, the long Turn 12 really puts the tyres under pressure and that will be difficult to manage on Sunday. That is something we will need to be on top of if we are to be in the fight this weekend.

We’re looking forward to the rest of the weekend now. Overtaking on the long run in FP2 was really tough so qualifying will be very important. We looked decent on the single lap but with the smoothness of the tarmac here, it wasn’t always straightforward to get the tyres working for lap one. That is something we will work on overnight and tomorrow in FP3; hopefully we can get ourselves in the battle for pole position.

Both sessions today weren’t too bad. We’re always trying to find extra pace and understand more about the tyres. It's all building confidence, especially here on a new track and I felt that we were getting up to speed lap after lap. There are always little things to tweak, work on and improve, and that’s what this evening is for. Tomorrow, we’ll look into the one-lap pace and how the tyres will perform on the long run but anything can happen, so let's hope it's a clean session and we get out of it what we need.

Overall, a solid day. Lots of learning and driving on a new track always makes things a bit tougher to get on top of. Once you settle into a rhythm it’s a pretty enjoyable one to drive but tyre management is going to be a tough one, as we have a lot of graining. I felt like we got a bit closer in FP2, which was a positive step, but we're still lacking pace, so we'll be working hard overnight to try and find more time.

The main challenge is extracting the maximum performance from the car on a street circuit like this. Hopefully tomorrow we can find more consistency and unlock the ability to get that extra time out of the car. We’ll see what we can do.

It wasn’t the cleanest day today, but I’ve really enjoyed the new track which is super fun to drive. Confidence is key around here, so losing some track time in FP1 wasn’t ideal, plus I had a bit of traffic in FP2 which made things more difficult. Overall, I have a good feeling in the car. We’re building the pace session by session and now the focus is on pulling everything together for Qualifying tomorrow.

What’s positive is that we can have a feel of the new upgrades, much more than in Monza. There are a lot more corners, more grip-limited sections, and at the moment, we don’t have the inconsistency between cars, which is quite positive, so we need to have a good look at that. We’ll keep pushing, it’s been a very good day, so we need to keep at it. The track is extremely challenging in every aspect, but it’s very good fun, and I’m having a blast out there.

For all of us, Madring is very different and takes a lot more time to get used to compared to tracks that we’ve been to many times over the years. The track is very exciting, it’s very fast in a lot of places, and very high commitment. FP1 was all about building up. The track gets a lot faster because it’s never really been driven on as we’re doing a lot of laps, putting rubber down, and making it faster, but I think after FP2, there’s definitely more time to find. I think the main goal for over the weekend is to try and do as many laps in Practice as possible and be prepared for Qualifying. So, we probably left a little bit of margin while getting used to the track, but everything feels okay so far. We’ll try and tune it up overnight and have a stronger drive tomorrow ahead of Qualifying.

It's always a nice challenge coming to a new circuit and seeing it at speed for the first time. I must say, I really loved the track. It's very exciting, it's high-speed and gives you a real adrenaline rush lap after lap. The walls come at you quite quickly, so you have to be very precise with lines and really commit to the corners throughout the whole lap. In terms of our day, I think it could have gone better and we have a few things we can improve. There is definitely more pace to find ahead of tomorrow, which should put us in the mix for the top ten.

It was an interesting first day on a brand-new circuit. There was a lot to learn and plenty to explore, and it's definitely a unique track. It's incredibly fast, almost like a rollercoaster, with very little room for error, so it keeps you on your toes all the way around. We gathered plenty of information, and now it's about going through everything overnight, understanding what we've learned and seeing how we can use that to improve further.

It’s been great to finally get a first feeling of the Madring. Overall, it’s been a positive day for us: we learned a lot throughout the two sessions, although there is still some work to do overnight to try and extract some extra pace from our car. That will be our main task tomorrow – we’ll keep working, and I am looking forward to it.

It was an interesting first day at the Madring, it’s a cool track and it’s fun to drive – it feels to me like a hybrid of Baku and Jeddah. FP1 was a bit challenging, but we made a few changes on the car and made a big step forward for FP2, so I’m quite happy with the progress. Now I have the feeling in the car that I had in Monza, so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do tomorrow.

The Madring is certainly an exciting new track. We've spent a lot of time on the simulator preparing for it so to drive it for the first time for real today was very enjoyable. It's certainly an interesting track, very fast throughout and definitely one where you need everything to click into place. In terms of our day, Free Practice 1 was very much about learning the track and building things up step by step. As usual, in Free Practice 2, we did a bit of low fuel and high fuel to give us some ideas and data to learn from going into the rest of the weekend. We need to find some improvements and now we'll put some time in with the team and the engineers to find which direction on set-up to go.

Friday done in Madrid! We've had a relatively smooth day with no issues or incidents, just a good couple of sessions where we could experiment with the setup. The track is spectacular. It's one of those tracks that gets you going when you're in the car, and it feels hectic to say the least, but I'm really enjoying it. Unfortunately, we don’t seem competitive at this circuit, but we'll do the best we can to put together a strong weekend and see what we're able to do.

It was about getting familiar with the new track today and working on some optimisation of the car setup.

Unfortunately, we had an issue with the clutch at the end of FP1 and that left us with a slightly delayed start to FP2.

It's going to be tricky to get it right tomorrow in Qualifying with the traffic and battery management, but we'll look to execute everything as best we can.

It was challenging out there today; there are a lot of different style corners, so it was quite tough on the tyres. I also struggled with deployment as it felt quite different lap to lap, so I just felt like I never fully found a rhythm with the car. The SIM correlation wasn’t too far off, so that’s a positive, but we’ve got a fair bit of work to do as a team. I thought it was going to be a bit more of a qualifying weekend, but I think with the extra-long pit lane, race pace and strategy are going to be factors we need to consider.

It's a really cool track and a great venue. I’m so happy to be racing in Madrid and I'm confident this is going to become one of the best races in Europe. We have some work to do with the setup of the car overnight, but it was a good day overall and we were able to get some valuable data on long running.

A productive first day at the Madring. A new circuit for everyone and we are constantly learning. It’s unique with its tight and flowing sections which provides a good challenge. We completed two good sessions today, but we still have a lot of work to do in order to get the balance right and get the most out of the tyres. Overall though, a good first step and I look forward to debriefing so we can analyse the data with the engineers tonight.

A tricky day, it was good to get the laps in this morning, where we identified a few changes we needed to make to the car, but ultimately we didn't get the chance to make any progress in FP2 due to a gearbox issue.

Whenever you come to a new circuit, track time is very important, so we're clearly on the back foot having missed FP2. We'll work hard overnight looking at the data from FP1, from Oscar's car and the teams around us, and make sure we get as much learning as we can in FP3. Otherwise, it was good to get the first laps done here in Madrid, it's an interesting circuit and I'm looking forward to getting some more laps in ahead of Qualifying tomorrow.