Sebastien Buemi (15th): “We started the morning with some new components to try on the car, specifically a low exhaust configuration and an F-duct, which we are just beginning to test, even if it still requires a lot of work. After a few laps, as planned, we removed it and concentrated on understanding the car in the Monza low downforce configuration and the results were not too bad. We ran both types of tyre and even the Softs are good enough to do a lot of laps. It was a productive day, with answers to a lot of questions, which is an encouraging starting point for tomorrow. The car seems to have a good top speed down the straights, which is always useful here. Now we need to work more on the second and third sectors where we are losing a bit of time.”
Jaime Alguersuari (18th): “We got through a lot of work today, as we tested a lot of elements on the car, which has given us plenty of data to analyse, particularly as Sebastien and I split the workload trying different things. I think we can be pleased with our day’s work, running the car with different levels of downforce to make a comparison, although I had to stop a bit before the end this afternoon with a technical problem which the engineers are looking at now. There is much more potential in the car and as we usually find more performance on Saturday I am optimistic that this will be the case again here. I feel much more confident in dealing with the special challenge of Monza than I did last year, but to be honest, I prefer circuits with a few more corners, even if it’s always nice to drive a Formula 1 car wherever we are!”
Laurent Mekies (Chief Engineer): “Today, we used the first half hour in the morning on Sebastien’s car as an aero test of our F-duct, doing constant speed runs. It was never our intention to run it for this weekend, but it was useful in terms of gathering data. After that, we came back to the usual programme, with both drivers getting used to the downforce levels at this track, which are the lowest of the year. Sebastien had a useful day, completing his programme, while unfortunately with Jaime, we had to stop him before the end of the second session, because of a mechanical issue on the car. Fortunately, in the morning he did some very useful work on set-up, which will give us enough data tonight to make the best choices for tomorrow and the race. We ran the low exhaust on both cars throughout the day for the first time and we had no issues with this. However, there will be a lot of work to do tonight to ensure the new system can be used on Sunday, because racing is another step. There were no issues with the tyre comparison, because by this point of the season, we have a good understanding of what to expect from the different compounds.”
