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

Toro Rosso

Toro Rosso had a good day and ended up just where they expected to be. The trick now will be to say there as others look to make progress overnight…

Carlos Sainz: “It was definitely good fun out there today and a positive Friday overall – last year we didn’t get to do many laps here in the dry, so it was a pretty new track for me this time round. I have to say that I’ve enjoyed the day: this is a special and charismatic track which is exciting to drive! From a performance point of view, we are exactly where we expected to be, but we will keep on working hard and see where we end up at the end of the weekend.”

Daniil Kvyat: “I tried the halo during this morning’s FP1 session and I think there’s no big visibility implications. Of course, it’s a valid item but in my opinion there’s enough safety in Formula 1 and we don’t need it, but it’s not my decision. Regarding today, I think it was a decent Friday for us. We’ve completed a good amount of laps, ticking most of the boxes on our programme for today. The track conditions were not easy, as there was quite a bit of wind, but in general it was a good day. We will now do our usual job tonight and try to fine-tune everything to my liking in the attempt to be stronger tomorrow.”

Jody Egginton (Head of Vehicle Performance): “The day started well with both drivers being fairly happy with the baseline set-up, which allowed us to step through the FP1 programme efficiently, working on normal set-up work and also some optimisation of brake shape and tyre settings. The tyre data gathered during FP1 was very useful in understanding the required direction, with a focus on sector 3. Of course the normal increase in track and ambient temperatures for FP2 meant some further adjustments were required, which were well targeted by the engineers and allowed the FP2 baseline runs to pass without issue. The short runs on the supersoft tyres were made fairly early in FP2 to allow the focus to switch to long runs, with the FP2 ranking reflecting how close the midfield is. Long runs on the supersoft tyre yielded some useful data to allow us to understand how set-up changes made after FP1 effected car balance on this compound. For the final long runs we split the cars soft and medium to cover off all the required tyre evaluation. The soft tyre performance was as expected, whilst the medium tyre proved a bit more tricky to deal with, however we will work on this tonight. In summary, both drivers and the team have worked very hard today and completed a busy test program without any issues, hence I feel we have a good baseline on which to build on tomorrow.”

Sauber

Nasr had a reasonable day and the mood in camp is optimistic, even if Ericsson had a power unit problem in FP1, and struggled with the balance of his C36 in FP2.

Marcus Ericsson: “It has been not the best day for me. In FP2 I was struggling a bit with the balance of the car. Especially on the supersoft tyres, I did not get a good feeling for the car. We have some work to do for the rest of the weekend. It is positive that the other car seemed to have a good balance, so we can learn from it in order to be stronger tomorrow.”

Felipe Nasr: “It was a positive day. I was able to get a good feeling from FP1 on. We worked through different set-ups for the car, and it seems that we are going in the right direction. So far the pace looks good, but we all know that it’s only Friday. We need to analyse all the data and see where we stand. Nevertheless, it was a good start to the weekend.”

Williams

Williams did their usual set-up work while also trying a new front wing and brake ducts. The general consensus is that they aren’t quite there yet on balance in readiness for the tough upper-midfield battle on Saturday and Sunday.

Valtteri Bottas: “Today’s practice was pretty straight forward with no problems for me. We covered all three compounds we have available here this week and did a double install with the halo device. The starting balance of the car was perfectly good, as well as the driveability, but there’s still plenty of work to do in both the short and long runs. We can make improvements in all areas I think ahead of tomorrow.”

Felipe Massa: “We were not looking as competitive in FP2 on the low fuel as we would have liked, so we need to go away and understand what needs improving. There isn’t one particular area that we need to focus on, it’s a mix of things that we need to get coming together. It will be a big fight with Force India tomorrow and we need to make improvements overnight in order to get the edge on them.”

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: “Today was a fairly standard Friday for us and the focus has been on completing our work plan as usual and getting the data we need. We had new aerodynamic components on the car this morning that we were testing, a new front wing and brake duct, and these looked reasonably positive with good driver feedback. Valtteri tested the halo this morning as well. It was a purely aesthetic device to gauge driver reaction and visibility. In the afternoon we focused on our normal tyre and set-up work. On the long and short runs we look to be roughly where we expect to be relative to the teams we are battling with, so I’m optimistic we can have a decent weekend. With the midfield looking as tight as it is, qualifying well will be very important, so we need to make no mistakes.”

Pirelli

Paul Hembery, motorsport director: “From what we can see so far there is around a one-second performance gap between the supersoft and the soft in these conditions. The medium compound is also about a second slower than the soft, which makes it quite an interesting choice for the race. We saw a high degree of track evolution compared to 2014, with rain dominating the conditions last year. There seem to be a number of strategy options: especially because this is a track that you can overtake on.”

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