The car worked well in the morning, but we were not so competitive in the second session. On my short runs and also on the long one, I had a problem with the balance of the car, although this afternoon, that aspect was a little bit better than in the morning. Generally though, I suffered with a lack of grip, which I can’t explain at the moment. However, I am confident we can find ways of moving forward and enjoying a competitive weekend at our home race.

Our performance was quite good this morning and we tried to improve for FP2, but unfortunately, we seem to have gone in the wrong direction. Having run only the Hard in the morning, in the afternoon, I did not set a competitive time on the Medium. I did make some mistakes and I will admit to that, but there were too many of them so we definitely need to get the car to suit me a bit better. At the moment, it’s on a knife edge. I was happier on the long run I did this afternoon and that was the most positive aspect. Driving here at Monza is always different and this morning, on the first runs, you definitely feel that extra speed down the straight, which is a nice feeling and something I enjoy about being here.

Like all the other teams, we have the usual Monza low downforce package here. We started off on the right foot this morning, pleased with the car’s baseline at the start of the session. We then managed to improve it over the course of the 90 minutes of FP1. We had some new elements to try and we tested them across both cars and we were also keen to get a long run test completed in the afternoon, which is always important at this circuit, as ideally you want to reduce the number of pit stops. Both compounds are quite closely matched and it will be a tight call to work out what is the best way to use them over the rest of the weekend.