27/04/2018
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez: "It's been a positive day and I think it's going to be a very interesting weekend. It's a track I really enjoy and with any street circuit it's all about finding the limits and pushing them as much as you can. The fight in the middle of the grid is going to be very close, but I think we can be competitive. The work we have done today gives me encouragement and I have a good feeling with the car. The main priority tomorrow is to make sure we deliver a perfect qualifying session so we can be high up the grid for the race. The track conditions at the end of the day saw the temperatures drop quite a lot and that's why we saw drivers making mistakes and running wide. It's going to be tricky during qualifying tomorrow."
Esteban Ocon: "I think we are in good shape. It's been a solid day working our way through the job list and improving the car. There is more speed to find tonight and tomorrow, but we have done our homework. I've been building my confidence during the day - which you have to do on a street circuit - and we have the potential for a strong weekend. The track conditions didn't really improve as much as I was expecting today. It was still quite dusty and slippery this evening and it was pretty low grip in the cooler conditions."
Otmar Szafnauer: "It's been an encouraging day of practice allowing us to achieve most of our objectives. The first session was basically an aero testing session with both cars trying some development parts. All the data we collected will help us learn more about the car's behaviour and where we can find more performance going forward. The second session was routine with a mixture of qualifying and race preparations. It's clear that the margins between the midfield teams are very small, but the early indications suggest both our cars have a good opportunity to qualify inside the top ten tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Baku, here.