Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

Heute war ein guter Tag. Die Fahrzeugbalance war von Anfang in Ordnung. Ich habe an diesem Wochenende einen frischen Motor im Auto, der ebenfalls gut zu funktionieren scheint. Meine Pace sah in beiden Trainings konkurrenzfähig aus. So gesehen war es definitiv ein schöner Start in das letzte Rennwochenende der Saison. Ich bin mir aber sicher, dass es morgen noch Verbesserungsspielraum gibt. Die Strecke war auf den ersten paar Versuchen im ersten Training noch ein wenig schmutzig, aber sie ist schnell besser geworden und fühlte sich dann durchgängig gut an. Gegen Ende des zweiten Trainings hatte ich einen kleinen Zwischenfall mit Grosjean. Ich dachte, dass er mich gesehen hätte, als ich ihn auf der Innenseite überholen wollte. Als ich merkte, dass er mich nicht gesehen hatte, gab es keinen Ausweg mehr.

Das war ein ungewöhnlicher Freitag für mich. Ich hatte damit zu kämpfen, den richtigen Rhythmus zu finden. Aber es gibt eben solche und solche Tage. Das Auto hat sich nichtsdestotrotz gut angefühlt. Es gibt aber noch Verbesserungsspielraum, daran können wir als Team und ich persönlich noch arbeiten. Ich werde mich heute Abend hinsetzen und sicherstellen, dass ich es morgen hinbekomme. Ich habe einige neue Wege mit dem Auto eingeschlagen. Wir wissen bereits, wo es gut funktioniert, deshalb pushe ich das Auto in anderen Bereichen, um zu sehen, ob ich zukünftig noch etwas aus ihm und den Reifen herausholen kann.

“The first session was quite challenging for us. The balance of the car was not great, but we took a very good step forward and returned to FP2 with a better performance. This is positive, as the track conditions were far more representative of what we can expect during qualifying and the race, considering that they both take place during the night in Abu Dhabi. Tyre degradation is quite an important factor here. We seem to be fast in the first and second sectors, however still have some work ahead in optimising how we perform in sector three, so we will focus on that and try to make some further improvements. Our competitors may very well be stronger than what they have shown in FP2, so we will see how things stand tomorrow.”

“In the medium low speed corners of this circuit we are still lacking speed, compared to our rivals. Sector three is the one that really hurts us, we are struggling with the tyres getting hot, and the car is difficult to drive. Of course when you drive on the limit, any car will be more difficult to drive, and this what we are here to do. We will try our best to have a solid weekend, we can improve the set up and then see if we can fight well on Sunday. Today I hit the barriers: I was caught out a bit by surprise as I didn’t expect to spin. I knew going in that I would have to catch the rear, but it didn’t quite work, which was a bit unfortunate, but the only damage was to the rim.”

“Overall, it was a pretty decent Friday. I’m not entirely happy with the balance yet and there are of course still some things we need to look at and do better but overall I’m pretty pleased. Mercedes look very strong here again and will be hard to beat but I still think it will be close tomorrow. We will analyse the tyre data later today but overall there are no real surprises. The soft is quick over one lap and on race runs it drops off as expected.”

“It was tricky out there but overall today was good and we’re getting there. It’s difficult to get the tyres working and there’s quite a lot of dust down so that’s why we saw a lot of cars spinning. The balance was ok and we know we need to improve a little bit here and there but Max looked quick so let’s see how things go tomorrow. I think I’ve got a little bit of fine tuning to do on my side, especially in sector three, but we’re chipping away. The Ferraris will of course be quick in qualifying but let’s see where we are come qualifying.”

“I was running a modified package, one that I hadn’t run before, so we were really doing it to get my feedback and to learn for the future. In FP1 I was really happy with the floor, the modifications and so on, so I said let’s carry on with it into the second session. Unfortunately, we only had one of that package. Tomorrow we have to change the car back. It’s not great as we did a really good job today with sixth in FP1 and seventh in FP2, best of the rest in both sessions. Yes, race pace can be improved, but we tried a few different things and we know where we could have done better. Now tomorrow we need to revert to another package. Valtteri (Bottas) apologized, he made a mistake, he even offered me one of his floors but we have to stick with what we know!”

"It has been a good day and our pace in FP2 was competitive. The evening session is generally the most representative so I’m feeling quite optimistic. Tomorrow is looking very tight and I think one or two tenths will make the difference between making Q3 and missing out. If we are able to put everything together and find a bit of rhythm and pace tomorrow, we can secure a good result in qualifying. Our race pace is also looking competitive so hopefully we can carry this forward into Sunday."

“It was a productive day, FP1 wasn’t so important as the conditions are different to the conditions we race in, but it’s still useful to get some reference points and see how the car behaves. FP2 was also productive, all of the laps were important because the conditions are more representative for the race, so it was good to put so many laps in during the session. We’ll see when we study the data tonight what we need to do with the car for tomorrow. I felt quite good with the car today, but it doesn’t mean we can stop working and leave everything like this, things change over the weekend and we need to adapt.”

“It was a bit of a messy FP1 between the red flags and getting blocked on my second run, so it wasn’t an ideal session as we didn’t do many laps. The good thing was we were still able to test a couple of things we had planned. FP2 was a better session, as between the two cars we completed more testing ahead of Qualifying and the race, so now we have good things to analyse to decide what’s the best configuration for tomorrow. I’m happy with this afternoon, the long-run pace was strong and I think there’s more to come in the short runs. To finish in the top ten today makes us feel positive.”

“A decent Friday in terms of running but obviously just a bit outside the top 10, which is not ideal. The field seems to have tightened even more this weekend and the battle to lead the midfield tomorrow will be tough. “I’m confident we know where to look for those extra tenths and hopefully we can take the necessary steps to qualify close to the top teams.”

“A difficult day. We’re not where we want to be in terms of the pace of the car. We do have positives concerning the car but also some weaknesses. “We just need to work on those then I think we should be looking better for tomorrow. Qualifying is going to be very close as usual, no matter what. We just need to make sure we extract every little bit.”

"The car looks pretty competitive, but obviously we don’t know what set-up and fuel loads the rest of the teams are running today so we will see what tomorrow brings. There are some things to look over tonight, but our pace in the second session gives us confidence for the rest of the weekend. We have a good balance here so it’s about optimising our package tomorrow. Every weekend is important but we definitely want to finish off the season on a high."

“It’s slightly difficult to say how it’s been today, it’s been a little bit difficult to read. FP1 was okay, then in FP2 I had a lot of traffic. I was just really unlucky with it. So that’s made it hard to get a real feeling on things. Even on my long run I kept getting traffic, it wasn’t really a good session. As I said, FP1 was okay. We saw Romain (Grosjean) up there at the top of the midfield in FP2, so it can’t be too bad. He obviously had damage with Bottas crashing into him, he has to go to another floor – the same one as me. I’m hoping that wasn’t the reason he was so fast, we’ll see.”

“It was a fairly standard Friday. The first session was hot under the sun and then things cooled in the evening where conditions are similar to both qualifying and the race. There were no particular problems for us and we worked through our programme as planned. The car felt good in the first session but we seemed to lose a bit of performance in the evening. We need to see what happened there. We’ll dig into the data and aim to make some improvements ready for qualifying.”

“It wasn’t the smoothest Friday for us today. We missed a bit of running with the engine issue in the first session and, in the evening, we made some changes to the car. We were a bit off the pace, we haven’t quite found the balance yet, so we’ll be looking for some further tweaks ahead of qualifying. I’m feeling confident we’ll get there and find the sweet spot to put us in a pretty good place for tomorrow and for the race.”

“Die Rundenzeiten vom Freitag haben eine nur geringe Aussagekraft. Entsprechend konzentriere ich mich darauf nicht allzu sehr. Wir müssen noch an einigen Dingen arbeiten, alle gesammelten Daten analysieren und vor dem morgigen Tag Verbesserungen vornehmen. Erst wenn das Qualifying läuft, werden wir sehen, wo wir im Vergleich zu den Übrigen stehen.”

„Im FT1 sahen wir stark aus, aber während des morgigen Qualifying werden die Bedingungen eher denen ähneln, die während des FT2 herrschten, als es kühler war. Wir müssen alles überprüfen, was wir heute lernten, eine gute Abstimmung finden und alles auf den Punkt bringen, wenn es darauf ankommt. Als ich Druck machte, unterlief mir ein kleiner Fehler, aber ich berührte die Wand nicht. Letztlich geht es darum, das Limit zu finden, und genau dafür ist das Training ja da. Die Rennstrecke ist recht lang, weshalb die Abstände natürlich größer sind, aber im Kampf im Mittelfeld wird es trotzdem unverändert eng zugehen. Wir müssen alle Daten, die am heutigen Abend vorliegen, analysieren und mit Blick auf morgen die richtigen Entscheidungen treffen.“

The car was feeling nice to drive, probably one of the best of the year, but the pace was quite slow. It was tricky around the circuit, because it changes a lot from FP1 to FP2 as the conditions get cooler and it turns from day to night. I was enjoying it and it was good fun to drive. I felt that I learnt something from FP2 in the long runs, especially after the red flag as our pace was stronger in relative terms. I have not been feeling great, but the session was good for me and I feel fine to drive, which is the most important thing.

Today was quite a mixture. The first session was surprisingly good for the conditions we had on the track. I was pretty happy with the balance and with the things we were trying, which were more for next year. Normally FP2 is a better session in the cooler conditions and with lower track temperatures, but for us it was the opposite. We need to try and get back to having the behaviour and feeling of the car I had in FP1, so, as always, we will try our best, and hopefully it will work better tomorrow than it did this afternoon.