It was good to drive here for the first time with an F1 car – it was obviously quite challenging, but I enjoyed it. The conditions out there today were tricky, especially with the wind that picked-up during this afternoon’s FP2 and there was also a bit less grip on track. We don’t look too bad here, but we still need to keep finding time – I think the others could improve massively for tomorrow and we have to make sure we do the same. It’s very competitive out there and the long straights don’t make it easy for us, but this doesn’t mean we won’t stop working on it! I’m feeling positive and I look forward to the rest of the weekend.

It was quite a clean Friday, something we had been missing for a while, so we definitely have a good baseline for the rest of the weekend. Of course, we still have a few bits and pieces to digest and to correct for tomorrow and if we do it right we should get better and better. I felt quite good in the car and I enjoy driving here, it’s a pleasant track from the good old days.

We fitted a new aero package today and as usual this requires some specific and dedicated runs to confirm it performs as expected. I am pleased to say that so far all the analysis done has given ‘green lights’ – although, as always, we will need some time to really tweak and optimise around what the package brings us – and that was true between FP1 and FP2 today. In terms of our performance, I think it is again very tight in the mid pack and I had perhaps hoped to be a little more competitive here than we are. It is no secret that we have tended to rank a little on the low side recently in the speed trap rankings and this has been a significant source of lap time loss to our competitors today. Unfortunately, this has become quite a recurrent pattern as other power units have received upgrades in recent races. As a result, today’s setup work has focused somewhat on trying to maximise performance around what the new package brings us, but also to get a good compromise of a ‘raceable’ package from an overtaking point of view for Sunday, without compromising cornering performance. Daniil has performed relatively well today after taking a new direction on the setup side – I am hopeful this will pay dividends tomorrow and on Sunday as well.