British Grand Prix – Friday 8th July 2016. Silverstone, England

Haas F1 Team

Romain Grosjean: It was a pretty good day evaluating the three different tire compounds. The car doesn’t feel too bad at high speed, which is great news for lapping at this track. We still need to find some performance in getting the tires to work. That will be the main job this evening when we go over everything from today’s two sessions.

Esteban Gutierrez: It was an easy morning for me not competing in FP1. I then started my programs for FP2, which was pretty positive from the laps we did and everything that we tried. Today gave us an opportunity to change the setup and send us in the right direction. So far, the car feels good. However, the conditions were tricky out there with the wind. We’ve got a bit of work to do, but we’ll be using all the data we’ve gathered from today to get the most out of car for tomorrow, especially for qualifying.

Renault Formula 1 Team

Kevin Magnussen: Overall we had a good session working through our programme. The rear of the car felt a little more unpredictable and made it a bit tricky to drive this afternoon. It was very windy during the session this afternoon and that of course had a bit of an impact on the running today. Hopefully it’ll come down a little bit for the rest of the weekend. We did work on the tyres and the softer compound didn’t last very long for me – only just about five laps. I had a better run on the medium tyres and they felt easier to manage. There’s more work to be done in preparation for Saturday so that’s what I’ll concentrate on with my engineers to be ready for tomorrow.

Jolyon Palmer: Silverstone is a great track, with loads of great fans and I enjoyed driving out there today. It was a typical Friday for us on track. We tried out two different tyre compounds and low fuel levels, plus a run on high fuel. We were on the medium for most of the day: it has a low working range so it is difficult to build up temperatures and the car can feel inconsistent to drive at the start. It got very windy out there at times too, which didn’t help. The soft gives very good grip over one lap but then degrades quickly. I think it was an OK result; it looks like we are in a similar position to normal. I am sure we can find something tomorrow, and we have to maximise what we can do. It looks as though we’ll have British weather all weekend but a bit of rain mixing it up would be good for us!

Manor Racing

Pascal Wehrlein: We came here with the expectation that we would perhaps struggle slightly more than in Austria. Our tyre management was better there, whereas today we are seeing the same issues we experienced in the races before that. Having said that, we seem to have made some progress in FP2. At this stage I prefer to wait until after FP3 to see if we can continue to make some progress, but I would like to think we can have a good fight with Sauber and Renault. A lot will depend on the weather, I think.

Rio Haryanto: Yes, Silverstone is one of my favourites. It’s very fast and flowing, very high speed, but with a tricky final sector where you have some slow corners. I think we found a good rhythm this morning, but this afternoon we tried an alternative direction and it didn’t work out so well. It’s good to have that confirmation of our FP1 direction. It’s always too early to say how we’ll fare in the race – until the race – but we did some long runs and that will enable us to measure ourselves against Renault and Sauber and see what we need to do for the rest of the weekend.

Sauber F1 Team

Marcus Ericsson: It is good news that we tested our new rear wing here in Silverstone in FP1. We were able to collect a lot of data, which we now have to analise and understand properly. On the other hand, I was only able to do one stint in the morning. In FP2 we then had a busy programme with short and long-runs on medium as well as on soft tyres.

Felipe Nasr: It was a good day. We were able to run through our planned programme. It is positive to see that the engine upgrade is a decent step. Especially at this track, a good straight-line speed helps to gain some lap time. In general it was all about setting up the car on soft and medium tyres today. It was a bit tricky to get the soft tyres to work with the colder conditions in the morning, but in the afternoon we got a much better feeling for the car as well as with the tyres.




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