09/03/2017
NEWS STORY
Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer: It was a pretty solid day concentrating on race distances. We achieved this with Lance in good style this morning and despite a couple of red flags this afternoon, we still completed a good distance with Felipe too. We also looked at tyre degradation and stability through a race run. We're looking forward to tomorrow with Lance back in the car, where we'll be aiming to do some qualifying simulation work and some more race work in the afternoon. The team is now getting back on target and we are looking forward to the final day tomorrow.
Lance Stroll: It was a good morning. I was doing long runs on medium tyres and getting used to the car on them, which is good. We did a lot of laps. I am still getting to know the car a bit better, so it was a positive morning. I will be in the car all day tomorrow. I still have the ultrasoft to try, but I am getting to grips with things so I am happy with that.
Felipe Massa: The car did 165 laps in total today. Because of the red flags we couldn't do the full race simulation, with pitstops but we more than managed to cover the distance we were targeting without issue. With the car doing two full race distances today it shows the FW40 is reliable, and that's positive. Now I'm just ready to start the season! I'm not driving tomorrow but I hope the team has another great day with Lance. I just hope that we can start the season well in Australia and we can use everything we've learned here in the test to prepare the car for the first race.