Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Kvyat focussed on tyre performance in Shanghai

Daniil Kvyat was relieved to get through Friday's two free practice sessions without any drama on his part, as he kept his head down putting in the laps and collecting vital data for the team ahead of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.

"Nothing special," the Red Bull Racing driver replied when asked how the day had been for him. "FP1 was complicated for everybody. FP2 the tyres were working in a very strange way, we need to understand how to make them work."

With all the attention in the first session going to the tyre failures suffered by Felipe Massa and Kevin Magnussen which reduced the track time available to teams by nearly half an hour, Kvyat was able to run 14 laps and finished with the sixth fastest time, albeit over 1.5s away from the top of the time sheets.

The afternoon session was mainly dedicated to longer race stints with heavier fuel loads, with Kvyat notching up 31 laps of the 16-turn, 3.388-mile Shanghai International Circuit in bright and sunny conditions.

But a big question mark hangs over what the conditions will be for Saturday's FP3 and qualifying sessions.

"I don’t know, I’m assuming it will be the same weather," shrugged Kvyat. "If not we will work from there.

"The forecast said it might be raining, but we don’t know 100 percent. We will wake up and see what the weather is doing tomorrow."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.