USA Grand Prix – Friday 21st October 2016. Austin, Texas

Haas

Haas’ debut on home soil was difficult, as Grosjean experienced unidentified technical problems in FP1, and Gutierrez lost some aero parts in FP2. Both cars also stalled at the end of the pit lane at the end of FP1, necessitating being pushed back to the garage.

Romain Grosjean: “Not a very positive day for us as we’ve been struggling with some technical problems with the car. The balance was not too bad, but we just didn’t get the performance. There will be a lot of work tonight. Looking at the data, we have to try and get the best out of the tires. It’s such a cool track to drive, but we just didn’t manage to get it right today. Hopefully, we’ll have everything sorted for FP3.”

Esteban Gutierrez: “It wasn’t an easy day for us. Unfortunately, I had an issue with some aerodynamic parts. It disrupted our program as you get a shift on the car balance, which is obviously not ideal to get a reference and work on the setup. We’re investigating this, but we believe it’s down to vibrations. We now have some work to do to put the car together and try to optimize what we have at the moment. We’re going to be working very hard tonight with everything that we have. Hopefully, tomorrow is going to be a better day for us.”

Guenther Steiner, team principal: “Not a great first outing for us here. We had a series of small issues – the main one being the rear brake drum’s winglets falling off the car. It seems that the loads are very high and we need to fix this before we head into FP3 tomorrow. If things like this happen, your test program goes all up in the air and the data you collect isn’t any good as you’re missing aero numbers. We’ll keep on working on it and try to be as ready as we can for tomorrow.”

Red Bull

There was a lot of set-up work going on all day at Red Bull, but it seemed to have paid off, particularly for Ricciardo. He said he was very happy with the way the day had gone and that the single-lap pace wasn’t bad, while the long-run pace may even have been slightly quicker than Mercedes. Verstappen said his car needed work on its single-lap performance, and that the supersofts lost speed every lap.

Max Verstappen: “We tried some different setups from FP1 and FP2 to try and find a strong feeling with the car. In the end we found a good one for the long runs on soft tyres but we still need to improve the short run pace. I’m quite confident we can do that tomorrow. We got some good data from the short runs but struggled to find a clean lap. We changed the setup during FP2 in order to improve some issues, which is why my car was worked on for a while. The supersoft seemed to lose grip every lap and get slower, so I think for the race it will be interesting. The long run pace seemed good, I had a Ferrari in front of me and I was catching it so I think that is a positive sign.”

Daniel Ricciardo: “I’m happy with today. This morning was solid and the long run pace was good. We made a few changes in between the two sessions and look pretty good for now so hopefully we’ll stay like that. On our long run pace we look like we’re able to match Mercedes, possibly quicker, so if we get the pace we had today against Mercedes on Sunday it’s going to be a fun race. It is only Friday though so let’s see what they’re doing tomorrow but it’s nice to start the weekend on the right foot. I don’t think we’ve got hours and hours of work ahead of us. Just a little bit of fine tuning as always but we don’t have to search for too much at the moment.”

Manor

Ocon had a spin in FP2 but otherwise ran well as he worked through his programme. Wehrlein took his car back from King after FP1, but lost tyre temperature due to a red flag in FP2 and didn’t really get a decent lap time on the board. King meanwhile did an excellent job on his official F1 race meeting debut, and impressed plenty of observers with a strong performance in FP1.

Esteban Ocon: “I really like it here. This morning we worked through the usual programme of circuit familiarisation and setup work, then this afternoon it felt like we were really up to speed, which I think came through in my lap time. I made a small mistake and spun, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with how things are going here. I’m looking forward to rolling everything we’ve learned today into qualifying now. It’s looking good so far.”

Pascal Wehrlein: “It was a pretty condensed and fast-moving session but on the whole, the afternoon went well. We made good progress up to my Supersoft run, then on the out lap the red flag came out and on the second run my tyres were not up to temperature and I ran into traffic. So, not the best, but as I say, the rest of the programme was good.

“The track is really interesting – quite technical and fast-moving and some really exciting features. I particularly like the section of slow corners towards the end of the lap that are similar to Hockenheim. I’m looking forward to more track time tomorrow to see how we’re looking here.”

Jordan King: “Today has been one of the best days of my life. I had a massive smile on my face as I drove out of the garage, let me tell you. On the one hand, 90 minutes just flies by. On the other, I’ll probably remember each of my 29 laps for the rest of my life. It really has been a dream come true.

“It’s an incredible circuit. Really exhilarating to drive, with all the elevation and camber changes. Plus, the section from 3-9 reminded me of home – it’s a lot like the Maggots-Becketts-Chapel complex at Silverstone. When I put the Soft tyres on, it was a pretty special feeling. So, yeah, an incredible day for me and difficult to hand the keys back. I’ve always said that the biggest test of my own performance here would be providing data and feedback that makes a positive impact on the team’s performance. But at the same time, I’m incredibly happy with my pace.”

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