04/07/2014
NEWS STORY
Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado completed the first day of running at the Silverstone circuit for this weekend's British Grand Prix. Pastor experienced a power unit related issue in the morning session, precluding him from setting a timed lap, but fared much better in the afternoon when both drivers set best lap times which were just 0.033secs apart.
We worked on set-up and understanding the circuit with different fuel and tyre configurations. Pirelli's hard (orange) compound tyre was used in the morning session and the hard and medium (white) in the afternoon. Pastor experienced a power unit related issue in the morning session meaning replacement for the afternoon. There is still potential to be unlocked in the E22 at Silverstone.
Romain Grosjean: "There's still work to be done and in some ways I was happier with the car in the morning. We tried quite a lot of different set-ups to improve the aerodynamic platform in the afternoon, coming back to something we had earlier in the year. We've still got quite a bit to go through in the debrief with some hard work ahead to understand where the gains can be made."
Pastor Maldonado: "The start of the weekend hasn't been easy as we suffered from a Power Unit issue this morning which meant that our first session was over very early. Everyone has done a fantastic job replacing it with a new Unit and we were able to make good progress in the afternoon. There is plenty to work on with my engineers before tomorrow. I'm confident that we can get out more from the car so as always we will push as much as we can."
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "The day didn't start well for us with a problem for Pastor's power unit and a struggle to get Romain's car the way we wanted it. We made quite a lot of changes for the afternoon and both drivers were able to report progress. We've still got quite a lot to refine so there's scope for improvement tomorrow."
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