11/12/2020
NEWS STORY
Daniil Kvyat: "We managed to learn something about the car today and did a good number of laps, but I didn't feel like we've got everything right, so we'll do our homework tonight and understand what we can do to improve for tomorrow. The conditions between FP1 and FP2 were quite different and, as usual, the second practice session is much more representative for Quali and the race, so hopefully we can find these extra tenths tonight to get it completely right for tomorrow."
Pierre Gasly: "Looking at the gaps today, I think it's going to be really tight this weekend, with six or seven positions separated by one and a half tenths. The battle in the midfield is quite intense so it's going to be very exciting for Quali and the race. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the car, we did our Option runs in the final laps of the session and we showed our pace, which makes me feel confident for tomorrow as I think we are going to be right in the mix. There are still a few things we'll need to sort out, so we'll work tonight to find those extra tenths to make sure we are ahead of the midfield rather than behind."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "It wasn't quite as smooth of a Friday as we've become accustomed to as a team. Unfortunately for Daniil, he didn't get to complete his FP140 run due to a small issue, so we had to abort his run. That put him on the back foot to start the weekend, because it's a difficult track to get into a rhythm with so many corners and high track evolution, so the setback wasn't ideal. In FP1, we gave both cars two sets of Prime tyres so they could do some setup work to try and find the best compromise around this track. We found some good directions to take, so we made some bigger changes from FP1 to FP2. At the start of FP2, like all teams, we ran the 2021 tyre which was the Prime specification and gathered some information for Pirelli for next year. We then moved onto our short runs, although, due to our tyre allocation, both cars fitted the Base which is obviously a big step away compared to the Option from a grip perspective. When we switched to the C5 Option runs, it's fair to say we didn't extract the maximum potential from those, so there's something for us to understand in terms of out-lap tyre preparation to get the tyres in the correct window for the first lap. We haven't shown the performance we normally do on a Friday, but we have a good group of engineers and we'll analyse the data thoroughly tonight and come up with a plan to improve the performance tomorrow. The midfield is extremely tight, around six cars are within a tenth of a second, so we're not looking for much, but every last little detail can make a big difference."
Check out our Friday gallery from Yas Island, here.