05/05/2023
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "It was a challenging day because the pace does not seem great so far, so we need to find a solution to improve. Compared to last year, our overall performance has increased and the track surface has improved, but we are still lacking quite a bit of pace compared to our competitors. We didn't have any big upgrades coming into this race, so we'll need to try a different approach for tomorrow."
Nyck de Vries: "Miami is a unique event and the venue is great, so it feels awesome to be racing in front of the American crowd. It's a new track for me and grip levels are extremely low, so you get quicker with each lap that you do. Even though the temperature is quite high, tyre warm-up seems to be a challenge because they need a long time before they perform. There is something to find in that area, so we'll analyse this tonight and hopefully come back stronger tomorrow. Looking at our performance today, we are not where we wanted to be, but we'll try to put all the pieces together."
Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "It hasn't been such a straightforward Friday for us today. Both drivers have been struggling with overall grip and find it hard to extract the lap times. Yuki completed a front wing comparison in FP1 with positive results, so this will be retained for the rest of the weekend. It's not a game-changer and works better with the aero components we have coming on stream in future, but it is still adding performance with this package. This morning Nyck had a small spin in the twisty section of Turn 11 and Turn 12 and just touched the wall with the rear end of the car, but the damage was enough to have to stop the session and swap the gearbox for FP2. The mechanics did a great job to turn the car around, and having missed out on running the Soft compound in FP1, it left him with two sets for FP2. On the other side of the garage, Yuki ran on the usual Medium and Soft tyres. Again, there were no big balance limitations for either driver, but they just lacked grip, so we need to review the setup and tyre usage overnight. Due to the red flags, we didn't get good long-run data for tyre understanding, but the new tarmac here doesn't seem to be having such an impact on tyres, so the race will likely be a similar story to last year. We all have a busy night ahead of us to try to find some grip and lap time, as the performance we have shown today is falling short of our expectations."
Check out our Friday gallery from Miami here.