27/08/2021
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "I'm really happy to be back racing again after the summer break, particularly at such a great track like Spa. It was important for us to have the best start possible this weekend and I think that's what we've done today, finishing P3 and P5. We know the areas we need to focus on going into tomorrow, as of course there's always some extra speed to find. The weather is very interchangeable here in Spa, we've seen it today with different conditions, and we may have rain tomorrow, so we need to be prepared for that as well. The baseline we have seems to work and we're hoping we can confirm that everything is working well in Qualifying tomorrow."
Yuki Tsunoda: "My main target this weekend is consistency and to build up the pace in the car across the practice sessions. I think so far this has gone well and we've been able to adapt across the sessions to improve our performance. As a team, you can see the pace is there, so I just need to continue improving and gaining confidence ahead of Qualifying tomorrow. The weather changes here are fairly traditional for Spa, it's definitely quite difficult to drive, but I have some great memories from this circuit over the last few years and I'm excited to be driving here again, especially in a Formula 1 car."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "We've been faced with the usual Spa conditions - cold, damp and difficult – but we've come away with two fairly dry sessions, so we've managed to get some good running in today. For Yuki, it was extremely important that he got up to speed, as it's his first time driving here in a Formula 1 car. It was a case of putting the lap time together, as well as building up his confidence in the car and he made good steps between FP1 and FP2. On Pierre's car we conducted some aero tests during the morning session and were able to gather some important data there, as well as having a good setup direction which we were then able to develop going into the afternoon. I think on the timesheets you can see that we've had a fairly good performance here today, particularly on the short run, and we're pleased with that so far. Due to the two red flags this afternoon, no one really managed to get any long-run data. However, on the few laps we were able to complete, we think that it's the area we need to focus on the most ahead of Sunday's race."
Check out our Friday gallery from Spa, here.