I’m feeling pretty positive about today. The car has performed well so far and I’m fairly happy with the balance and confident with the performance. In fact, right from the first lap of practice, I’ve been feeling comfortable in the car. The afternoon session was obviously interrupted because of the rain. We knew it was coming so we tried to do as much as we could before it arrived. I’m feeling happy about what we learned today and we have a good chance to have a strong weekend.

We did a lot of work this morning trying different downforce levels because it’s very important to make sure you have enough straight-line speed for Sunday. The second session was very rushed because we knew the rain was coming. We went out straightaway on the supersoft tyres and the track had very low grip. I also did a long run on the supersoft which gave us the data we needed. Overall I’m feeling optimistic for the weekend: I’ve got a good feeling with the car so we just need to keep up this rhythm and get a good starting position tomorrow.

Both Nico and Sergio were pretty happy with the car balance right from the off and so we simply focussed on making small improvements here and there. We also experimented with various wing levels to find the optimum balance for qualifying and the race. We knew that the forecast was suggesting rain this afternoon so we carried out some longer runs at the end of the morning session to get the data in the bank. In the afternoon it became clear the rain was going to arrive quite early so the priority was to get an understanding of the supersoft tyre. We managed that with Sergio, but unfortunately Nico’s run was cut short, which meant we only had the long run data from one car. On the whole I think we’re reasonably well prepared for tomorrow. The grid is always very tight here with small margins so hopefully we can build on the promise shown today.