29/06/2018
NEWS STORY
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: It's been a productive day. The weather looked a bit threatening throughout but we have managed to avoid any of the rain that was around in the hills and complete our full programme. It was good to have Robert back in the car as it was the first time since the Barcelona test. As always, his feedback is invaluable especially after a few weeks out of the car. Moving onto this afternoon, Sergey was back in his race car and did a good job getting back up to speed having missed time this morning. Lance has continued to do a strong job in both sessions working through the programme. We had a number of aerodynamic tests running on both cars, based on some results that we learnt last week in France. We trialled new parts on the car that the guys in the factory managed to turn around very quickly in the last few days which is very impressive considering we are in the middle of a triple header. As usual, we have lots to go through tonight and hopefully we can move the car forwards for tomorrow.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was a good session, we had a busy programme with a lot of things to try. I think we managed quite well. We completed all our planned runs, we tried all the things and we still had a reasonable long run pace which is a positive end to the session. I'm not saying that tomorrows qualifying will match today but we have covered many things and we are happy with the work and the results we are getting. It's nice to be back in the car after missing FP1.
Lance Stroll: It was another practice day just figuring everything out and getting ourselves in the best shape for going into tomorrow. I think it was a good day where we learnt quite a bit going into qualifying. The kerbs have always been something here that us drivers have to watch out for as there are some big yellow ones on all the exits, so we have to know our limits. This morning I had a bit of downshift problem going into third and then we lost radio communication, so I just boxed in case it was something but it was fine as the team was on top of it.
Robert Kubica: It was good to be back in the car after nearly two months, and the feeling was good as I have not driven here for nearly 15 years. The track is short and looks easy however, it is quite a tricky track, but I found a reasonable pace straight away. We focused mainly on trying some extreme solutions just to gather more data and put the car in an extreme window to really highlight the areas where we might be struggling. It was quite strange to drive but I think it was worthwhile and overall a good session.
Check out our Friday gallery from Spielberg, here.