08/04/2022
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "I must say this new track layout is pretty cool, it's definitely a lot faster which is always personally something I like, as you can definitely feel the potential of an F1 car when you're going through a corner at 200-250 kph, that is a really unique experience. It's obviously quite challenging getting to grips with a new layout and definitely bumpier than we expected, but it's been a good day. There's a couple of things to improve for tomorrow, to unlock some more potential, but generally speaking I've enjoyed today. I think we struggled a bit this morning and didn't start the session off in the best way, but we made a lot of improvements for FP2 which was really positive. Alpine are looking strong this weekend, especially with Fernando, but we'll focus on ourselves ahead of Qualifying and try to extract the most from the car. Personally, I don't know if there will be more grip coming tomorrow but I hope so, from past experience that's what we've seen on new tarmac, but let's wait and see."
Yuki Tsunoda: "I really enjoyed driving around this track. I don't know the difference from previous years, as it's my first time, but I felt confident around here straight away. We had good pace early on and I'm pretty happy with how the day went. We know our limitations and we're heading in the right direction in finding the right setup for the car. There are still a few areas where I can improve myself as well, so we will see how we can put everything together to maximise the performance of the car ahead of tomorrow."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "It's great to be back in Melbourne after a three-year break. The changes made to the circuit appear to be positive, with the realignment of several corners and complete resurfacing making a notable difference. The focus of the day was to understand how the tyres work on the new tarmac, and what setup changes we needed to make to extract the maximum performance. The compound allocation skips the C4 here this weekend and instead we have the C5 soft tyre, which is a true Qualifying tyre, and one which we haven't used at races so far this season. So, there was an amount of learning to complete on the short runs on this compound. We also had a matrix of aero component test items to complete in FP1, the results of which steered the FP2 setup. Performance overall was in line with expectations, and we are in the midfield mix. Given all of the tests completed today, it made it more difficult than normal for the drivers to get into a rhythm, which is very important around here, so we will aim to work on this during our Qualifying preparation in FP3 tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Melbourne, here.