There wasn’t much grip on track today and in general, we struggled a bit more, which was down to a series of factors, including the track being less rubbered-in than usual. On top of that, we have less aerodynamic downforce than in the past and also in my opinion, the tyre choice here is too conservative for this track. Now we face a lot of work to try and optimise the balance of the car and get the most out of it, even if the circumstances are not that favourable to us. We must be cleverer than the others in terms of making the changes we need and adapting to them in time for qualifying.

We had a particularly busy time on track today, trying to do as many laps as possible to complete the planned programme over the two free practice sessions. In the morning, we tried various set-ups, alternating between two different rear wings, while in the second session, we concentrated on preparing for qualifying and the race and on analysing the behaviour of the two compounds Pirelli has brought here. This evening, we will carefully analyse all the data gathered, to decide which direction to go in.

Today we had a particularly packed programme and despite the very poor track conditions complicating our task, mainly in the first session, we managed to get through it without any glitches. We tried various aero solutions in the morning and did a comparison between the two Pirelli compounds this afternoon. We have suffered with poor grip especially on the Hard tyres and this made controlling the car more difficult, but that was the case for most of the teams. The data gathered from the work we split between the two cars will be extremely useful to understand in which areas we can improve and, even if our rivals proved to be very strong, we will do our utmost to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying and the race.