17/11/2023
NEWS STORY
Lando Norris: "Today was a tricky day on a tricky circuit. The grip was poor and it's easy to go through the tyres quite quickly, which is what we were doing.
"I think we're a long way off where we've been the last few weekends, but probably where we expected. It's similar to where we were in Monza and other low downforce circuits. It's a struggle at the minute but I'm sure we can make progress into tomorrow."
Oscar Piastri: "It was interesting to get out on track for my first laps in Las Vegas. It was very, very slippery and it's a difficult track which is quite bumpy, but it was nice to get out there. The tyres were pretty difficult with a lot of graining, which is something we need to try to look at for tomorrow. We'll have to see what we can do, hopefully it's a better day all around for everyone involved and hopefully we can have the crowd back tomorrow. It's a shame they didn't get to see any action today."
Andrea Stella, Team Principal: "It was a shame for teams and spectators alike that we lost the first session, but what happened with the manhole cover is something that we've seen before. The FIA reacted well to fix the problem and get us going for FP2.
"We had some issues with cooling the car, which means we lost a little bit of time at the start of the session. We got going relatively soon and got into understanding the behaviour of the car and the behaviour of the tyres. Conditions here are unique, with a unique temperature and unique tarmac characteristics. It's very smooth and very slippery, which means the cars operate in a regime very different to what we've seen in recent races.
"We have work to do to extract more performance - but we gathered a lot of data that we will look at in preparation for FP3. There is performance we can unlock, and we remain positive about the rest of the weekend, but we need to find this improvement because we weren't particularly competitive today. My thanks go to the entire team who have navigated working on a difficult schedule into the early hours of the morning. We now get some rest ahead of a busy few final days here in Las Vegas."
Check out our Friday gallery from Las Vegas here.