Manor
Rio Haryanto (11th, 1:28.266, 51 laps)
“It’s been an important week for me and the team here in Barcelona and generally it’s gone well. I’ve learned a lot about the new car and identified some areas for improvement, to make the second test even more positive for me. I did make a mistake this afternoon and the damage to the car could not be repaired quickly, so it’s a shame we didn’t complete our programme today. Generally though, we’ve achieved a lot of mileage and completed some good evaluation work. I’ve started to build a nice relationship with Manor Racing and also our Mercedes HPP and Williams teammates, so my thanks to everyone for helping me make a good start to my debut F1 season. I’m looking forward to making more progress next week.”
Luca Furbatto, Chief Designer
“Overall, a positive first test with the new car. The main objective has been to check the installation of the Mercedes power unit and Williams transmission before progressing to basic set-up work. We haven’t had any major issues out of the box and that level of reliability has enabled us achieve close to 300km of mileage each day - pretty much a race distance. We have also given our new drivers a good workout in terms of familiarising themselves with the car, albeit they ran to different programmes. Pascal’s task was probably a little harder in that the car was literally brand new and we needed to find a good set-up from which to establish development direction. Rio focused on reliability runs and checks with different fuel levels. His feedback has been quite important because, of the two drivers, he is the one who has driven both the MR03 and the MRT05. This back to back insight suggests we’ve made some good improvements in all areas of the car. At this stage we aren’t placing too much emphasis on relative lap times; some teams explored the full soft tyre spectrum here but next week’s programme is where we’ll start to look at more of the outright pace of the package. All in all we’ve made a good start but there’s still a lot to do for Melbourne and into the early part of the season. We’re positive about the first test, but already focusing on the second.”
