Adrian Sutil, 11th: “A pretty positive day for me. We had quite a lot of work to get through to evaluate our new aero parts, but that went well and the balance of the car felt okay from my first run. We worked a bit to improve things, such as the stability under braking, which is especially important here. As usual I ran both tyre compounds in the afternoon so that we have good data for tomorrow. The soft (option) tyre was very consistent and the degradation was not too bad so I think it’s probably the better race tyre.”
Paul Di Resta, 14th: “The way things unfolded today has been quite unfortunate. Nico’s accident this morning meant that my car wasn’t ready for the start of second practice and I had to sit and wait. The guys did a great job to get everything repaired in time for me to get out for the final few minutes of the session, but I only managed three timed laps. It means there is plenty of work to do in final practice tomorrow morning to make up for the lost track time.”
Nico Hulkenberg: “I was one of the first drivers to start a proper run this morning when the track was quite green. Unfortunately I locked the rears under braking for turn 12 quite early in my run, the car turned left into the wall and caused quite a bit of damage. It all happened so quickly at 300 km/h and there was no chance to react and catch the car. I’m really sorry for the team and I’ve also apologised to Paul because it limited his time in the car this afternoon.”
Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director: “We experienced low grip conditions with a lot of track evolution as we’d expect of a street circuit. There was quite a lot on our programme to test today, but unfortunately we lost a lot of the session time on one chassis following Nico’s off in first practice. There was no serious damage but just a lot of work to be done in a short space of time. This limited Paul’s programme to a handful of laps, but we’re confident it can be recovered tomorrow. We managed some good work with Adrian and it seems the new aerodynamic parts we brought here are working well, although there is still some work to do on the balance. It seems like we are closing the gap to the cars ahead but, of course, you don’t know about their programmes, so it will be an interesting qualifying session tomorrow.”
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