Sebastien Buemi: “As planned, I ran just in the afternoon, but all the same we now know more or less what we can expect for the rest of the weekend and what areas we still need to work on to improve the car. My car ran trouble-free all day, starting with Daniel’s drive in the morning, which is always a positive. Conditions are hotter here than in the past few races and that needs to be taken into account. The new medium compound tyres seem to work well, although it is a bit too early to say we know everything about them. At this track, the key is to have a car that works well in the slower sections and that means braking stability is very important. We can still improve the car quite a bit before qualifying and the race. Overall, it was a good day’s work, which forms a basis for the rest of the weekend.” Second Practice Session Best lap 1.40.454, pos. 15th, 32 laps
Daniel Ricciardo: “It’s a bit difficult to remember all the corners here, because there are so many of them and it is quite a complex track. Fortunately, I was able to put in some time on the simulator which was useful, because it seems to be a characteristic of this circuit that a lot of the corners appear to be going in one direction, but actually you find they go somewhere else! I enjoyed the session and I particularly liked the first sector which feels very much like a street circuit, whereas towards the end it opens up a bit and is faster. The car seems to be working well and has improved. The team has worked hard to bring some performance upgrades for this race and so far they seem to be moving things forward in the right direction. I could feel that it has some potential and even if the lap times and classification don’t mean that much in FP1, Jaime being tenth and me twelfth was a positive performance. I ran just the Prime tyre and first impressions were that it works well.” First Practice Session Best lap 1.42.412, pos. 12th, 27 laps
Jaime Alguersuari: “I was only able to run in the morning, as we had a problem on the car that could not be correctly analysed and fixed in time for the second session. However, I had an interesting morning, running the new medium compound tyre and we were able to gather plenty of data on this and other aspects of the package, including some updates we have here. As a general comment, I’d say the car feels better. I am sure we will solve the car problem in time for me to catch up in tomorrow’s final free practice.”
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