26/10/2018
NEWS STORY
Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: We have had some good weather today in Mexico and it was a busy session for us in FP1 with a large number of experiments going on both sides of the garage. We completed our programme to plan. The stand out point was the high level of graining on the hypersoft tyre. Going into FP2 it was clear the graining was a big problem on both the hypersoft and ultrasoft tyre compounds. We had a much better run on the supersoft tyre with Sergey. Again, we managed to get through all our homework this afternoon. This is an important circuit to dial in a lot of system points for the race due to the altitude of the circuit. We will be optimising overnight seeing what configuration we can run in qualifying and the race. We will particularly look at how to get through the race with the tyres we have available, which I'm sure is also a concern for many other teams. This is going to make a very challenging but interesting race.
Lance Stroll: It was the usual Friday. We did a fair bit of running and learnt a lot in these conditions with high altitude and low grip. It took some adapting from my side and for the engineers this weekend. We must think about a few things going into tomorrow. We will try to get into Q2, but we don't really know where our competitors stand, as you never really know on a Friday. Looking at the time sheets today it is close, but that is Formula One. It is going to be tricky on the tyres, especially for the guys starting on the hypersoft - I wish them luck! We will see what Sunday brings and I am sure it is going to be a very unexpected race on race strategy and other things. On fuel it is going to be challenging, but it is not the only track that has its fuel limitations, so that is nothing we haven't experienced before. Tyres, brakes, high altitude will be factors on Sunday.
Sergey Sirotkin: It was a busy Friday. We had an interesting morning where we went through a couple of interesting things. I don't think they gave us any performance, but it was good to get the experience. In the afternoon we switched to long runs with high fuel. Performance wise, it was tough, which was not a surprise for us. Ahead of tomorrow we have a few things to optimise but we ran some productive tests, so we should be happy with that. All in all, a tough but reasonable Friday.
Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City, here.