Team talk: Day four at the first test

Toro Rosso

Max Verstappen (5th place, 1:25.393, 110 laps)
“Today was another good day, we managed to do a lot of laps, especially in the morning. We are understanding the car more and more and I think it all worked out well. The car is behaving well, so we can be happy. This first test has definitely given me confidence in the car. It was important to run as much as possible and we’ve certainly achieved this goal! I look forward to next week’s test where we will continue to work as hard as this week.”

James Key, technical director
“We can be pretty proud of the mileage we’ve achieved during this first test because we didn’t know really what to expect, coming here with so many unknowns with the new power unit and a complete new car in the STR11. But I think the whole team has pulled together extremely well and made it possible to do four days of generally pretty productive testing. I think most of the things we wanted to achieve here we’ve done. Most importantly, we wanted to prove that the car worked as hoped with the new power unit installation and all the new complicated mechanical systems, and that appears to be the case, so we are very happy with that. The drivers have done a very good job. Carlos did 161 laps in one day, which is a huge amount of mileage, and I think he dealt with it extremely well. Max did 110 today, so in general we’ve had plenty of opportunity to prove reliability, which is critical with only two test sessions before the season start. Working with Ferrari has been extremely easy and straightforward, they’ve supported us very well. We’ve had some good cooperation with them over the past four days and I’d like to thank them in getting things prepared on time. We’ve ticked a lot of boxes for general car operation reliability, but we’ve only just started to learn what makes the car tick, so now we need to work much more on the performance side of the car, extract more out of that and bring some new updated parts next week. We’re looking forward to that.”