31/10/2014
NEWS STORY
Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado successfully completed the day's programme at the Circuit of the Americas ahead of this weekend's United States Grand Prix. Part of this morning's session was used to assess a development nose for the 2015 car, while the afternoon's tyre evaluations brought today's practice laps to a total of 122.
The first session was predominantly dedicated to aerodynamic assessments, particularly evaluations of the 2015 development nose, which was used by Romain, who additionally had air flow evaluation equipment installed on his car. Both cars ran with Pirelli's medium (white) compound tyre in the first session, with Pastor completing an installation lap using the intermediate (green) tyres. A total of 54 laps were completed by both cars. The second session focused on tyre assessments and further set-up work with 68 laps completed using the medium and soft (yellow) compound tyres.
Romain Grosjean: "It was a bit of a rodeo ride out there at times and we're still working on finding the best set-up for the car today. Certainly the wind in the afternoon didn't help us with trying to get the car easier to drive although our position on the timesheets at the end of the day wasn't as bad as we've seen on occasion this season! There are a few areas we know we can change which should make an improvement so there is progress to be made."
Pastor Maldonado: "It was great to be out on track again in Austin at the Circuit of the Americas as it really is a fantastic facility. We worked through our usual Friday programmes and learnt a reasonable amount. The car was a little tricky at the limit as myself and Romain both found, but we expect that to improve tomorrow.
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "It was a solid day for us with a good number of laps completed and some interesting evaluations undertaken for the rest of this weekend as well as for the development of next year's car. Romain ran in the morning with a front nose concept relevant for our 2015 car whilst Pastor evaluated the latest iteration of the 2014 nose. Both cars ran reliably so it's now the usual trawl through the data to determine the best set-ups for qualifying tomorrow and the race on Sunday."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.