04/12/2020
NEWS STORY
Lando Norris: "Today wasn't a good day for us. We're quite off the pace so we've got quite a bit of work to do going into tomorrow. From my side, it was quite a messy day with one mistake that I made which meant a floor change, and then an issue with the engine that put us out for the rest of the session. So, not the best of days - looking like one of our tougher days in terms of pace. When we needed the laps, we didn't get them, so we're in quite a tricky position going into tomorrow, but we'll work hard overnight and see if we can make some improvements to the car."
Carlos Sainz: "To be honest I'm a bit surprised with the pace today. It's only been five days, but the pecking order has changed and we're not looking as strong as last weekend. Also, it hasn't been the cleanest of Fridays with both of our cars having some sort of issue. Having said that, it's only Friday and we still have the night to figure out how we can come back stronger and recover a bit the performance that it seems we've lost. We're on it."
Andrea Stella, Racing Director: "Same venue, completely different challenge! Compared to the layout we raced on last Sunday, we have a very bumpy new section of track, and so today needed to adapt the set-up of the car to accommodate that. We also needed to reassess the behaviour of the tyres and find the right level of downforce - it was interesting seeing a quite a lot of variation across the field today in that regard. Our day was also affected by a few issues which cost us track time, and this is not ideal.
"It looks like we have a lot of work to do overnight if we are to qualify well tomorrow and give ourselves the best chance of scoring good points on Sunday. That certainly won't be easy because, as usual this season, the midfield looks very tight, but we'll certainly try as hard as we can."
Check out our Friday gallery from Bahrain, here.