Toro Rosso
Carlos Sainz: “We were only able to do three complete laps today because of the weather conditions. It’s a shame, because this is a new track for me so it’s important to get as much mileage as possible out there - but ending up P4 in FP1 is a good achievement. The car felt good in the wet and this gave me confidence. The fact that we didn’t get any running in FP2 is not ideal, but we just need to wait and see if the rain stops tomorrow.”
Max Verstappen: “It was good to be back driving here in Austin again. It’s a shame about the weather, as we were not able to complete many laps because of the rain. But the car was performing well in the wet, so we can be happy about that. You never want this much rain on a Friday, especially during my rookie year when the most important is to get as much mileage under your belt as possible, but we just have to deal with it.”
Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer): “It’s disappointing that the weather has curtailed our running today. Having two young drivers, we were hoping to get lots of mileage in. Having said that, both Carlos and Max got some Inter laps in during FP1 after waiting a little bit for suitable weather conditions, and they did fine. I was pleased to see that their experience has grown to the point now where they both radioed in to come through the pits and do a flap adjust to tweak the balance to their liking. We are now looking forward to the rest of the weekend, where there is more rain forecast; in particular very heavy rain tomorrow. Despite the limited running we have done we have collected some information on the inter tyre performance and wear, so there’s some interesting stuff for us to work on tonight to ensure race performance will be ok.”
