Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

Zunächst einmal war es schön, dass es heute trocken geblieben ist, denn die Wettervorhersage kündigte an, dass der Regen den Fahrbetrieb stören könnte. Damit hätten wir vor dem Qualifying und Rennen nur eingeschränkte Trainingszeit im Trockenen gehabt. Aber wir konnten unser gesamtes Programm durchziehen. Im 1. Training waren wir dem Plan sogar voraus, weil wir wegen des Wetters besorgt waren. Ich denke, es war ein guter Tag – zumindest habe ich ein besseres Gefühl als am Freitag in Spa. Wir haben auf dem richtigen Fuß losgelegt. Im 1. Training gingen wir beim Setup zunächst in die falsche Richtung, aber wir konnten es im 2. Training herumreißen und das Auto fühlte sich viel besser an. Insgesamt war es ein positiver Tag. Das Auto sieht stark aus, aber natürlich kommt es erst auf die nächsten beiden Tage an.

Das war ein guter, runder Tag. Wir konnten unsere Runden fahren und absolvierten unser Programm ohne Probleme. Das Auto scheint gut ausbalanciert zu sein. Wir haben aber noch etwas Arbeit vor uns, um noch ein wenig mehr Performance zu finden. Es scheint ziemlich eng zwischen Ferrari und uns zuzugehen. Deshalb erwarte ich, dass es ähnlich wie beim letzten Rennen aussehen wird.

“Today has been a mixed day” said Seb Vettel “and I hope tomorrow is going to be better. This afternoon for the first part of the session we mostly used Soft tires, but I am not entirely happy because we had a mixed run with a lot of traffic and the Virtual Safety Car period. So it hasn’t been the ideal day you are normally looking for, but I guess it was the same for everyone. Overall, we should have enough data to go through now. If we can improve a couple of things tomorrow, then it should be better. Mercedes has been strong here during the last couple of years but we focus on ourselves. We try to improve the car because there’s still a little bit missing and then we’ll start from there”.

“It was not an easy day: for whatever reason, it was difficult to drive and put the car where I wanted. I was looking for a better balance overall. For sure we have some work to do for tomorrow, but that’s a normal story on Friday. It’s difficult to say something about the performance; it’s only the first free practice, lap times don’t mean much and we don’t know what other people are doing. If we can get the car more to our liking, then we can improve and be faster”.

“We are more or less where we expected to be with the car today. It is hard for us on this track with the long straights which we have to combine with a very low downforce setting so we just try to make the best of it. We will start the race a bit further back with the penalties but hopefully I can enjoy overtaking a good number of cars on Sunday. It makes sense to take the penalties here as this track is already not that good for us, Singapore is better for our car so we don’t want to risk anything there.”

“We were pretty competitive in those conditions today. We’ll make some minor adjustments tonight but generally the car feels quite good here. If it’s wet tomorrow we’ll probably try everything and see if we have a chance for a pole position. If it’s dry we’ll have to assess further, because even if I’m pole position I’ll probably start at the back. Even though I’ve got the penalty I’m actually excited for tomorrow and the race on Sunday, knowing we’ll start at the back we have a chance to have a fun race. Of course it’s disappointing knowing that the chance of a Monza podium is unlikely, but the chance of a fun race is there. I expected this a few races ago so at least I was prepared, however I’m excited for the chance to pass a few people on Sunday.”

“It’s been a bit of a surprising Friday for us as a team. To be inside the top 10 with both cars has been a very positive start to the weekend, especially on a track like Monza where we know the engine deficit plays a very big role. I think it’s been a very positive Friday, but, as we can see, the lap-times are very close behind us, so we need to keep working – to keep fighting for every tenth, hundredth, thousandth we can find – because it’s easy to lose a lot of places here. “We would be extremely happy if we can carry forward today’s performance into tomorrow, but I think we might go backwards a little bit as the others probably have a bit extra in hand with engine modes. But, we just need to benefit from others’ mistakes, really focus on our own performance, and hopefully we can carry this momentum through to tomorrow. “The weather forecast doesn’t really worry me. So far today has been dry – I haven’t yet seen the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend – but we’ll see what happens and you never know how it will affect our running.”

“Today has been a very positive day, with a good feeling in both sessions. We did find some performance here, which was a little bit unexpected because coming to such an unfavourable circuit for us we weren’t hoping much, but we have both cars in the top ten 10 and this is very good. “We’ve tried some interesting things and there’s been some good learning, and hopefully tomorrow we can put more into qualifying and repeat the result, even though it will be more difficult. “Stoffel helped me in Spa, when he had penalties, and here I’m starting last due to penalties again, so I will try to help him as much as I can by doing some towing, and hopefully put him in the best position for Sunday.”

“It was a solid day of practice. We were testing a lot of different things and I think we came away with some very good data at the end of the day. I am pretty happy with how things went and the work we completed – we will need to do the same tomorrow in the final practice session before qualifying. There was a lot of track evolution as the day progressed: the main straight, in particular, has been resurfaced and the practice starts felt a bit slippery. It started raining at one point, but it didn’t last long so it didn’t really influence our day.”

It was a much better Friday than we’ve had in the last few races, so I’m really optimistic that the car can be more competitive here in Monza compared with how it was in the last races. We tried some different bodywork options and different wings plus we managed a lot of laps on the tyres so I really hope everything comes together to have a much better weekend.

"Not the birthday I wished for! I knew since yesterday that we were going to get a grid penalty for changing part of the Power Unit, so that wasn't a surprise, but today's PU issue is definitely not something we welcome! This didn't allow us to complete our programme and we know that we're up for a very difficult weekend here in Monza. We will of course keep our chin up and keep pushing – I have to say I'm feeling good in the car, it's very light as we are running very low downforce to try and compensate our engine deficit... It's tricky out there, but at least I'm enjoying it and hopefully we can extract the maximum out of the car tomorrow and on Sunday."

“We had a pretty standard Friday. The balance felt good but we have the usual challenges of Monza, top speed isn’t our strength so we need to see how we can address that for Saturday and Sunday.”

“Overall the car feels okay, though we were not yet as competitive as we’d like to be. We knew Monza wasn’t going to be the easiest track for us, having said that, we know there is still more to come from the car. We did lose some running time this morning following a puncture on one set of tyres, but we managed to catch most of it back up during FP2 this afternoon.”

“It’s been a busy day and I feel quite happy heading into the weekend. We expected to lose some track time due to the rain, but it didn’t hit us so we were able to maximise our mileage. We collected some important information to help us set the car up for tomorrow. I wasn’t as happy with the car balance during the afternoon session, but we have enough data to look into the issue and understand how to fix it overnight.”

Today we were much more competitive, and it looks much better this weekend than in the past events. I had a good day on my side, but spun on my good lap in FP2, which was a bit frustrating, and I didn’t get to put my lap time on the board with the supersofts. However, everything is feeling good and hopefully we will say the same tomorrow. I think we can be very close to Q3, if not in it, so we just have to make sure everything works out and we will see what happens.

“I don’t think we should read too much into lap times, to be fair. This morning was very, very tight, and it was again this afternoon. Half a second would put us to P7, or so. Competition-wise, I’m not too worried. There are a few things we want to do on the car. The long run felt OK. We’ll try to make some magic tonight. I think, generally, it was a pretty good day.”

“We have something to understand about the tires. It seems like we’re not in the right window. We’ll try and work hard overnight and see if we can find a solution. The balance in the car isn’t too bad. It’s just a case of putting it all together.”

"Not a good Friday. I didn't feel comfortable in the car today and nothing really worked as well as it should have. We now need to review everything overnight, understand the reason for this and hopefully find a better solution for tomorrow."

“Im Grossen und Ganzen war der heutige Tag in Ordnung. Wir haben einige aerodynamische Konfigurationen getestet und uns dabei auf verschiedene Einstellungen des Abtriebs-Levels konzentriert. Es ist positiv,dass wir unser geplantes Programm durchgehen konnten. Nun schauen wir uns die Daten genauer an, um für diese Strecke die passende Fahrzeugeinstellung zu finden.“

„Der heutige Tag hat relativ positiv begonnen. Am Morgen kam ich mit dem Auto gut zurecht und konnte eine gute Anzahl von Runden fahren. Während des zweiten freien Trainings war ich jedoch mit der Balance des Autos nicht ganz zufrieden. Nun schauen wir uns die Daten bis ins Detail an, um die Gründe dafür besser verstehen zu können und die Fahrzeugeinstellung für morgen zu optimieren. Es ist gut, dass wir unser Programm ohne Schwierigkeiten abarbeiten konnten. Nun freue ich mich auf das restliche Wochenende.“