10/11/2017
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "A pretty good afternoon after a tough beginning of the day. This morning of course was not great for us with the engine issue, I had only one timed lap and Brendon none, so we didn't learn much - for me about the track and for the rest of the team about the car and setup... it wasn't ideal! I managed to do many laps in FP2 which was good, a short run on softs and super softs, and then long runs on the second part of the session so I think it was really good. We finally could seize the potential of the car and work towards qualifying and the race on Sunday. At least we have many things to analyse tonight and to work and improve on for tomorrow."
Brendon Hartley: "A tricky start to the day and the weekend... We missed FP1 because of an engine issue. In this afternoon's FP2 it took me a couple of laps to get back up to speed after driving a different car for a few weekends in a row! In the end we were able to complete plenty of laps - I was the driver that did the most this session - and we made some good progress. We now still have some time to find for tomorrow and that's what we will work on tonight."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "Obviously it was a very difficult FP1 for the team again, we came in knowing we would need to take some engine penalties for MGU-Hs, which we did. Unfortunately, the new MGU-H on Pierre's car failed early on while the issue on the other car looked more catastrophic than it was. It was something quite simple in the engine, where it smoked badly which everyone saw but we were able to fix it with no further issues. Both cars went out pretty much at the start of FP2, so the mechanics did a fantastic job, given there was a complete engine swap on one and an engine strip and rebuild on the other... so really well done to get them out. We were a bit on the back foot, obviously we lost a lot of time in the morning where we were going to be testing mechanical and aero items, so we pushed some of that to FP2 across both cars. The other priority in FP2 was focusing on giving both drivers lots of laps with the aim of getting comfortable in the car and turning the balance to suit. That was the target but they are still not 100% happy with the car so there's still some work for us to do tonight. We carried out the normal qualifying preparation and high fuel long runs, and the focus will be to analyse all of the data tonight and try to improve the balance and performance for tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Interlagos, here.