22/10/2022
NEWS STORY
BWT Alpine F1 Team ran a productive Friday Practice programme in preparation for this weekend's United States Grand Prix at a sold-out Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.
Fernando finished Free Practice 1 in sixth place with a best time of 1min 37.713secs while Esteban - wearing a special Spiderman inspired helmet - ended opening practice in eleventh with a lap time of 1min 38.102secs.
Esteban ran with the updated floor with a revision to the floor edge from the previous version with Fernando set to use the same spec next weekend in Mexico.
Free Practice 2 was extended by an extra 30minutes to account for Pirelli prototype tyre testing. Both drivers completed 26 laps as part of Pirelli's 2023 data collection.
Tomorrow, Free Practice 3 gets underway at 14:00 local time before Qualifying at 17:00pm.
Esteban Ocon: "It's nice to be back in Austin and driving at the Circuit of the Americas, a track I really enjoy. It was obviously an unusual Friday for everyone as we really only had Free Practice 1 to work on our set-up with this year's tyres, making this a relatively short day for us. It was interesting, however, to test next year's tyres during Free Practice 2 along with new tyre blanket temperatures and various other things that we'll be working with in 2023. We'll be looking at the data from both sessions closely and see what set-up items we can come up with for tomorrow."
Fernando Alonso: "It was a good Friday Practice for us today and we successfully completed our run programme. We'll continue our analysis overnight and into tomorrow in Free Practice 3, so that we can be in the best shape for Qualifying. We also had the Pirelli tyre test this afternoon and hopefully they can take lots of data from it. It's great to be back in front of the fans here in Austin and we are looking forward to Qualifying tomorrow."
Ciaron Pilbeam, Chief Race Engineer: "It's been a smooth day in Austin with two busy Practice sessions. We had to fit in more than usual into our Free Practice 1 programme as Free Practice 2 was dedicated to Pirelli prototype tyre testing. The first session ran well with Esteban using the updated floor, which worked as expected and in line with our pre-event preparations. While some of the track has been resurfaced since last year, it's still bumpy in places and our car seemed to cope well in the conditions. We have a good base to work from for the rest of the weekend and we'll do our usual Friday night work in preparation for tomorrow's Qualifying where we aim to make further improvements."