While neither driver feels that their times in today's free practice sessions were completely representative of the potential in the car, both struggled to optimise their package or find the desired balance.

The first session was dedicated to testing a suite of new parts for correlation purposes, with the aim of evaluating them for future races. In the afternoon session the team progressed with the run plan for the weekend ahead.

Fernando Alonso: "We tested a lot of things today and we probably compromised our final positions because of that. We have been in quite a good place on Friday in the last couple of races, and it's a matter of fact that with two or three tenths you can lose or gain a lot of positions. Here in Hockenheim we've lost a few positions.

"Hopefully this will change tomorrow, and there could be some rain around qualifying time, which is a big question mark. It's going to be cooler, cloudy and maybe even wet, so if that happens it opens up an opportunity for the midfield group and you can gamble a little bit more."

Stoffel Vandoorne: "This morning we did a lot of testing of new parts on the car to understand them a bit better, so we didn't have much running in the first session. We were doing some learning work for the team, and it has been beneficial to understand them for the future.

"In the afternoon, we again had a difficult session. This has probably been my worst Friday for a long time - I had a similar feeling to what I had at Silverstone, that something isn't working properly on the car. We can see that the car is not in its normal conditions, and at the moment it's a bit of a question mark for us to firstly put the car back to a position where it behaves normally, and then to see how we'll get on, on Saturday.

"There's going to be a lot of data analysis tonight to understand how to get the car back in normal conditions for tomorrow, and we'll probably change quite a lot of parts on the car. If the rain comes tomorrow, it'll be good news for us."

Gil de Ferran, Sporting Director: "Today was a difficult day. Unfortunately we had to deal with a lot of unexpected issues which cost us some track time.

"With regards to car performance, both drivers struggled to find a good balance, while Stoffel had to contend with additional issues specific to his car.

"We have a lot of information to digest overnight in order to make the most out of the sessions tomorrow."

Check out our Friday gallery from Hockenheim, here.