27/03/2015
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen: "It was a good start to the weekend, as I used this morning's FP1 to learn the track and I took it easy, as this is my first time here racing at this circuit. It's not easy to manage the tyres here because it's quite humid, but it was a clean first morning out on track. For this afternoon's FP2 we made some changes and I was happy with the balance of the car. There's still some room to improve, but the day went quite well overall."
Carlos Sainz: "I think it was a positive FP1 this morning. The car was well-balanced and quick straight away. During this afternoon's session we had a bit more of a problem, especially with traffic management, and when I went to do my Option run I wasn't able to put a lap together as I didn't find any clear space. But we've seen that with some clean running like the other car had, we managed to do a good lap time, so I'm calm and positive about where we are."
Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer): "We've had a bit of a scrappy day today. We haven't really got the best out of the car, the drivers, the conditions and we haven't reacted particularly well to what's happened... So we know we've got a bit of work to do tonight and the positive note is that we can be better tomorrow. In terms of the two drivers, they had slightly mixed fortunes across the two sessions. If we look more at FP2, Carlos had a bit of a traffic issue on his first lap on the Option tyres, so he hasn't been able to put together what we know he's capable of doing; regarding Max he managed to get his lap in, but the long run wasn't particularly great, so again we've got a bit of potential to improve things and be a little bit slicker on our side so that we can have a better day tomorrow. Obviously, the weather changes across the rest of the weekend now. We have lots of interesting weather forecasts, so the tricky bit now is to do all our homework to be ready to go out in the dry, but also to have a bit of a think about what we do in the wet conditions."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.