Yuki Tsunoda didn't put a foot wrong all day on Friday at the Red Bull Ring and even succeeded in outpacing his AlphaTauri teammate Pierre Gasly in both practice sessions.
Guided by AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost, the Japanese rookie has been slowly improving his reliability after an error-laden start to his maiden season in F1, and he was particularly happy to breeze through both FP1 and FP2 without a hitch.
"We’ve had a decent day and are happy that we’ve maintained the pace from last week," said Tsunoda.
"We have worked hard on our longer running, as that was something we found we struggled with during the race, and I think this has been really positive.
"They weren’t the easiest conditions out there, the circuit is much colder this week and then we had some rain towards the end of FP2.
"My main objective today was to gather as much data as possible ahead of qualifying and the race, by slowly building up my lap times and I’ve achieved that without making any mistakes, so I’m pleased with that."
After his limited mileage last weekend, in practice and on race day, Pierre Gasly was also happy to run through Friday's program unhindered, while focusing on his race pace.
"I was playing catch-up a little bit today, having missed FP2 last time out and obviously the race, so we spent time working on our long-runs and trying to understand the tyres," said the Frenchman.
"I think there were a lot of positives today and the pace is still there. However, we were slightly struggling in these different conditions, so we have a few things to look at tonight with the engineers and then we can make some changes for tomorrow."
AlphaTauri chief engineer Jonathan Eddolls pinpointed race trim degradation as an issue that will require more attention on Friday evening.
"The temperatures were quite different to last week and this had an impact on the tyres, so moving into FP2 we did some fine-tuning and the drivers did a good job over the short-runs," Eddolls explained.
"The longer stints were more of a challenge, especially given the very light rain for the last 15 minutes of the session.
"We appeared to have more degradation than our competitors, so this will be the area we need to spend the most time analysing tonight."
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