Toro Rosso
Carlos Sainz
“I’d say it’s been an interesting Friday. In particular, with the supersoft tyre being introduced here this year and the fact that the track temperatures have been super low today, I think it’s been a very challenging day – not only for us but for the whole grid. Hopefully this will create some opportunities for us on Sunday. At the moment we’ve performed well – inside the top ten – but we can’t forget that it’s only Friday, we know that things can change quickly on Saturdays. The good thing is that we’ve started the weekend positively and we will remain calm, work hard, extract the maximum out of the car and see where we end up!”
Daniil Kvyat
“I think it was a good day. We’ve ticked most of the boxes on our programme and I’m happy with how both practice sessions went – my race engineer Pierre is happy too, so that’s good! We now have to analyse all the data collected and get ready for the rest of the weekend. I’m feeling good in the car, even if the conditions out there today were a bit tricky because it’s very cold – therefore, like all the other teams, we will also need to find a good approach for this kind of conditions. We will work hard tonight and tomorrow we will see who’s done the best job.”
Jody Egginton, Head of Vehicle Performance
“I think we can be pleased with the work we have done on both sides of the garage today. Both cars had a reasonable baseline balance out of the box, which meant we could directly focus on the run programme whilst also giving consideration to the fact that the low track and ambient temperatures in FP1 were having a notable effect on tyre performance, especially with the higher working range soft compound. We achieved our FP1 objectives in terms of ensuring that the various systems were performing as expected in this challenging environment. We also gathered tyre data which, even if it was effected by the running conditions, it was in line with expectations. Changes ahead of FP2 were limited to small adjustments and changes in line with increased track and ambient temperatures. The FP2 run programme was completed with short run performance being okay, although we still have to work hard optimising the parts of our package we can influence, to try and compensate for areas of the package which are more fixed. As expected, the long run with the supersoft compound was challenging, but this was also the case in Austin so we are confident we can find some more performance on this compound. The soft and medium tyre performed as expected, so overall we are happy. One of the key points for the remainder of the weekend will be to keep an eye on the track and ambient temperature change, together with further set up optimisation and, if we manage this as well as we did in Austin, then we should be in good shape.”
