Sébastien Buemi:
“I’m glad I spent plenty of time driving this track on our simulator, as I did no timed laps this afternoon, because of a problem with the car. The changes to the track were much as I expected and there is a big bump at Turn 6. There are no passing places in the new section, but it makes for a longer track which is more interesting to drive. You need to be competitive in Sector 2 for a good lap time, which means you must compromise between needing high downforce for this slow part, while less downforce will make you quicker in Sectors 1 and 2. Fortunately, we will be able to analyse Jaime’s data and start from a better position tomorrow. However, when you miss most of Friday testing, it doesn’t make life easy. But we have to live with that and concentrate on tomorrow.”
Jaime Alguersuari:
“A good day in which we did all the laps we could, trying many different things. I think we improved during the day, but it’s hard to know where you are with the wide range of fuel loads being used. I feel the performance is there and if we have another nice day tomorrow, then we should be able to get the most out of the car. The track was very green this morning, but it started to rubber in this afternoon. The new section is nothing special and very slow, but I knew that from working on the simulator, which meant I already had an idea where to turn in and where were the braking points.”
Timo Glock:
“Today hasn’t been the start to the weekend that we hoped for. We always knew it was going to be tough but we’ve had too many technical problems which have prevented me getting track time today. We already had two tough nights but we have another one ahead, I’m afraid, to get us to a point where we can feel confident going into the rest of the weekend. On the positive side, if we can get on top of the issues we have we’ll be in an okay place because with the brief amount of running I have had, I can see that the car isn’t bad. I hope we can be ready to get some proper work done tomorrow.”
Lucas Di Grassi:
“Although a tough day, we actually had a good session this afternoon and got through a lot of things. For me everything is new. I wasn’t able to run this morning so the afternoon laps were key to my performance and helping us get started this weekend. The mechanics did a great job running the car and everything seems fine so far. Now we just need to work on car performance, which we clearly haven’t been able to optimise at the moment.”
Bruno Senna:
“It was certainly a relief to make history this morning. The car ran as planned and everyone is happy and proud. There is still a lot of work ahead of us. Three laps this morning and seventeen this afternoon is a great start. Of course, we could not try the car at its limits. I am confident that we will be working ahead and I want to congratulate my mechanics, engineers and the whole team for their incredible hard work.”
Karun Chandhok:
“My car was fired up this morning. I was hoping that it would be in condition to run fully a bit later than my team mate’s. We know that all systems are working and with the third free practice still ahead of us we can still look positively at the start of our first weekend of racing.”
