30/09/2022
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly: "I'm loving this track, it's a really special place and very technical. It obviously wasn't ideal to have the small fire when we connected the fuel breather, as we lost some running, but it was easily put out, ultimately it just burnt some paint, and we could get back out on track fairly soon after. Overall, on the performance side we're not that happy right now, we were quite far back in FP2, and we didn't have the pace to make it into the top 10 this evening, so we need to find something more for tomorrow. We brought some small upgrades here this weekend, which we'll need to now go away and analyse some more, so we can get the most out of them moving forward."
Yuki Tsunoda: "It's a shame we had to finish FP2 early, as I'm still getting to know this track and obviously wanted as much time to learn as possible, but we had a fuel system issue, so we had to come in to start fixing that ahead of tomorrow. I've really enjoyed my first time driving here, it's a bit of a mixture between Monaco and Baku, it's really tricky, the conditions are tough and it's obviously quite bumpy, but it's fun. It looks like it's going to start getting a bit cooler and maybe we'll have some rain on Sunday, but for now my focus is to maximise FP3, so I ensure I'm as prepared as possible heading into Qualifying."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "It's great to be back in Singapore having missed two years racing here - it's a fantastic event and a track which is demanding on not only the car, but also the driver and the team with the extreme conditions. FP1 was focused on learning how this new era of car behaves over the bumps of this street circuit - which is notorious for being the bumpiest of the season. We also spent time completing some aero work to characterise a new front wing, which we have brought to continue the development of the AT03. We built it up step by step during the session and had a clear view of the main limitations heading into FP2. The second session was more of a challenge, with a reliability issue on the fuel system on Yuki's car. This meant he didn't get to complete his low fuel running on the Softs, nor the long run, so he will have some work to do tomorrow. Pierre also lost a bit of time with a small fire after connecting the fuel breather, which looked worse than it was, and we were able to quickly get the car back out. Qualifying is key at this track and we haven't seen the performance we expected, so we have some work to do tonight to analyse everything and modify the setup accordingly."
Check out our Friday gallery from Singapore here.