24/11/2017
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo: "A pretty good Friday. This morning we couldn't really look at the lap times as we tried a little bit of testing for next week. However this afternoon we put everything in the car that we needed and it was solid. On low fuel we looked quite strong but I thought we would be a bit quicker with high fuel, so we still need to find a bit there. Nothing in particular, just the general grip wasn't quite there and I was sliding around so we'll try and find a way to keep the tyres working a bit better in the night conditions. I think it's still Friday numbers unfortunately, as we were ahead of one Ferrari and one Mercedes today. We expect them to be quick tomorrow, so if we have the same pace tomorrow as we had today I expect them to jump us. We still need to find a bit more speed."
Max Verstappen: "We tried a few different things today to see what suited the conditions. I was pretty happy in the first practice but not so much in the second one. We know what was changed which resulted in me not being able to turn as well as I would have liked so we should be able to fix that for tomorrow. This track especially has a lot of corner sequences so we need to be able to get the turning of the car spot on to be able to compete. We need to improve the set-up but we still don't look too far away so this is a positive to take from the day's work. The track is pretty slippery, if you run off-line, clip some kerb or find a sandy patch it is easy to lose grip, I think that is why we have seen a few mistakes. The engine we had today was an old one, it is definitely not 100% so we will change that tomorrow to improve the power. With a new engine and an improvement in the setup I am confident we will be in a good position. Mercedes are still looking like the team to beat, as they have been all year so we will try to get as close as we can."
Check out our Friday gallery from Yas Island, here.