McLaren
Fernando Alonso (9th, 1:26.082, 119 laps)
"After a long break, it's good to be back, and to complete a good number of laps - something I missed this time last year. The first priority for the team this winter was to make sure we went through the problems we had last year and find some solutions, and we've done this, at least on the reliability side. I'm proud of the team and the job that everyone has done together on this car. I enjoyed today, but I think there is performance we need to unlock in the car. Most of the laps we did today were for aerodynamics studies, and reliability studies: brake temperatures, water temperatures, etc. For a driver, these are things that are not very exciting, so I'm looking forward to doing some setup changes and running with different fuel levels to really enjoy the driving as well. On the aerodynamic side, there are a lot of parts that are quite new for us, so we need a little bit of time to mature the package, and the same on the power unit, too. For us, last year we learned a lot, and now with a completely new philosophy we still need a bit of time to understand everything and exploit its potential."
Matt Morris, director of engineering
"We had a good day with regard to reliability again; enjoying two days with no serious reliability issues has been a real positive. "Today we spent most of the morning performing aero characterisation work, which required a lot of the instrumentation on the car. Although this part of the testing is time-consuming, we have gained confidence that the chassis is delivering as expected, such that we can now move on to looking to exploit the performance potential.
"This afternoon we spent some time doing basic set-up work, running through control systems and characterising the chassis, as a continuation of yesterday's work with Jenson. We also ran through a number of different engine modes on the power unit to check functionality and integration, which went very smoothly and provided us with useful data. Most of the day was spent running at the harder end of tyre compound scale, so we shouldn't read too much into the absolute lap times.
"We completed everything we had planned for our programme for today, and a little bit more besides, so, overall, another very positive day of running under our belts."
Satoshi Nakamura, Honda R&D chief engineer
"Today's testing target was to do continuous laps at a steady pace so we could gauge the harvest and deployment of the power unit, and perform all energy management system checks.
"Thanks to the team's hard work and Fernando's focus in the cockpit, the 119 laps on track gave us plenty of feedback to finish today's planned running programme early. I am pleased to say that we will have lots of data to look through tonight and tomorrow onwards."
