22/03/2024
NEWS STORY
Yuki Tsunoda: "As a first day, we're in good shape compared to the last two races.
"The team did a fantastic job in terms of preparation, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Obviously, the field is very tight in qualifying as we know, so we'll finetune the small details, and I know those things will come and we'll be able to put it all together tomorrow. Now it's maximum preparation tonight, I'll push as much as I can and hopefully, we make it to Q3!"
Daniel Ricciardo: "Firstly, it was just nice to be back on track - it's a good one. For myself, Oscar and Valtteri it's obviously emotional. The crowd is crazy like you'd get at a rock concert, there are so many people here for a Practice day. I think Albert Park has always done a good job at keeping it full all day. You come to watch on a Friday and you don't just see F1, it's V8, Porsche, F2, 3 - it's a lot. It's good that Aussie motorsport is strong, and it's reaching areas like Valtteri in Finland.
"I drove here in 2022 when they just made the track changes. It's a lot faster than it used to be, it's good. I think as a team we started the morning on the front foot, and I think this afternoon, the others found a little more. I think we're definitely still within a shot of Q3 tomorrow. There are a lot of corners where, because it's still a street circuit obviously, you put it on the edge. I think the conditions and grip were pretty good and it was fun to get into it. There's a little bit of work to do tonight but nothing too crazy. As always, I think there's a bit of finetuning of the car, and it should give us a good chance for tomorrow. In terms of race pace, with the little long run that we did, it seems okay. Let's qualify in the top 10 and then it'll all get easier from there."
Alan Permane (Racing Director): "Today was a fairly routine and trouble-free day. We, like most people, ran a medium and then a soft tyre in the first Practice session to get up to speed, start looking at the car balance and assess the car for qualifying on the soft tyre. The same again for the second session; the medium and then the soft compound, and then high fuel running on the medium tyre. Both drivers were pretty happy with the car straight away and had no issues at all. It's been a nice day where we've just worked through our programmes, completed everything we wanted to do, and now we're preparing the cars for tomorrow."
Check out our Friday gallery from Melbourne here.