26/10/2024
NEWS STORY
Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: A day of mixed feelings.
We completed the programme with Franco in FP1 gathering valuable information for tomorrow and Sunday. Unfortunately, Alex caught a slow-moving Bearman in an unfortunate spot on the track with limited options to avoid a collision. Extensive repairs were needed, and the team gave it their all to repair the car in time for FP2. We came very close but needed a few more minutes to give Alex a couple of laps at the end of FP2. Franco completed the Pirelli tyre test programme in FP2 without any problems. Tomorrow we will be focussing on giving Alex as much run time as we can while with Franco, we will be looking to gather vital data for final set-up decisions.
Franco Colapinto: It's been a good first day here in Mexico. We made some changes between sessions however the car felt a little bit less alive, so we'll look at that tonight. Overall, the key today was to get used to the track and get up to speed which went well. We're going in the right direction, so we'll keep building tomorrow.
Alex Albon: It was a frustrating day today. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow but I'm hoping we're not too far behind given FP2 was a Pirelli test, so hopefully the lack of track time today is less compromising. Regarding the incident, I think Ollie got told that I was behind him too late and tried his best to speed up into the high-speed corners, but I just caught him at the worst part of the track and there wasn't much I could've done to avoid it. We'll put it behind us as a racing incident and hopefully turn things around for tomorrow.
Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City here.