AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda was buoyed by his opening day of running at Yas Marina, and says he'll be aiming for a spot in Saturday's Q3 shootout for the third race weekend in a row.
The Japanese driver clocked in fourth in FP1 as the fastest runner behind the leading Red Bull/Mercedes quartet of cars. In the faster early evening session, Tsunoda dropped to P7 but continued to outpace teammate Pierre Gasly.
"I’ve already driven here for the Young Driver Test last year and of course knowing the track beforehand always helps with my approach to the weekend, which hasn’t always been the case this season," said the 21-year-old rookie.
"I’m really enjoying the new layout of this circuit, we’ve still got some things to work on but I think the pace so far is quite good.
"We’ve got a lot of data across the two cars, so we’re in a good position to continue to improve tomorrow.
"My aim is to get through to Q3 in quali again, as we’re looking quite strong here and then our race pace is looking good also, so we just need to put it altogether when it counts."
Gasly, who clocked in P9 in FP2, was left with some homework on his plate ahead of his return to the track on Saturday.
"The layout is really different, it feels like a new track with a lot more high-speed corners, so it’s really cool," he said,
"We tried some different things with the car today, but I still haven’t felt that great, so we’ve got some work to do for tomorrow."
©AlphaTauri
AlphaTauri chief race engineer Jonathan Eddolls was satisfied overall with the Italian outfit's work day, although he emphasized the need to improve the AT02's single-lap pace.
"We tested some alternative setup directions across the two sessions with both cars and focused more on the long run pace," he said.
"This meant our short run competitiveness wasn’t quite where we typically are for a Friday, but we expect to make an improvement tomorrow, once we have analysed all of the data and put the optimum car setup together."
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