31/08/2018
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "Today was a busy day. Between the rain this morning and the afternoon being dry, we could analyse the car in both conditions. We had a positive start to the day during the rain, and this afternoon we did some good work in the long runs. Overall, we need to work and try to find more performance as the car didn't feel too great, I think there's room to improve for tomorrow. Hopefully there will be some rain for us which will level the playing field and make things more exciting."
Brendon Hartley: "It was a positive Friday in Monza, I was P4 this morning in the wet and momentarily held P1 which was nice! The car performed very well in the intermediate conditions this morning, but we had a small issue with our car in FP2 which meant we sat in the garage for a long time due to some problems on the bodywork. We missed out on some running time, but I would still say it was a good day and we're in the mix."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "The Monza Grand Prix weekend is one of the best of the season, particularly because of the atmosphere from the Tifosi. Unfortunately, we came in this morning to a huge amount of rain, although this wasn't enough to put the fans off who were still out in force. The rain continued throughout FP1, with the most suitable tyre being the Intermediate. We get a free one to use on a Friday which doesn't come out of our Qualifying or Race allocation, so we were happy to do a reasonable amount of running. We had planned many aero and mechanical tests for today, however, we didn't get to cover all of these due to the wet conditions. General grip was very low and the balance was tricky for both drivers, particularly on the low downforce setup we run which is unique to Monza. Having said that, we still managed to learn something in the session. FP2 remained dry as the expected rain never arrived, and we were delayed going out for the first run after Ericsson's big crash - thankfully he was unhurt. FP2 was the normal focus on Qualifying preparation across the two tyre types followed by long runs.
"Unfortunately, we had a small issue on Brendon's car after his first low fuel run and it took some time to fix, so he didn't get to complete his Supersoft run until late in the session. Even if at this point others had started their high fuel simulations, we managed to find a gap in the traffic so Brendon's Quali runs were not compromised much. It did mean though that he could not complete his long run which wasn't ideal. However, it was a successful afternoon overall and the car is looking reasonable here, particularly since we thought this would be our most challenging race of the season."
Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director): "First of all, we are all relieved to see that Ericsson is uninjured after his crash, which proved how strong the current F1 cars are. This morning's session was complicated, with the track slowly drying after the very heavy rain. In the dry afternoon session, we were able to get on with our usual Friday programme, although even that time was reduced because of the red flag, but technically it all went smoothly on the PU side on this power track. There could be more rain tomorrow, so we will carefully analyse the data from both sessions to be ready for any eventuality."