A positive way to start the first race weekend of the season here in Australia. We were able to follow our programme, without suffering any issues, which was the main target for today. We were able to keep learning and pick up from where we left in testing, so it was definitely a positive Friday. This doesn’t mean that we can now relax, as things usually get a bit more complicated on Saturdays, but it’s a good start. We now need to keep focused and finding lap time in the car. You can really feel that this new generation of car is much faster than last year. I’ve done the fastest lap of my life around Melbourne this afternoon, and it’s only the second practice session! We still have more margin for improvement, but it’s already been very exciting to drive our new STR12.

It’s been a productive Friday. We were able to complete many laps and we easily got through our programme. It’s all still very new, as it’s the first time for us here with these cars, so everyone will be looking to progress overnight and we will do the same. There is always room for improvement and I’m confident we will make a step forward for tomorrow. It’s great to finally be back on track and get the first race weekend of the year underway – it feels like we’ve finally gone back to school!

It was good to be back to the routine of a Friday at a GP and it has given the car crews the opportunity to get back into the groove. As is the case every year, the circuit has shown its normal level of evolution through the sessions today. It has been a productive day and we have gathered good data on all three compounds which, given the level of safety car risk here, will allow us to make informed decisions regarding risk versus reward if the opportunity arises during the race. As normal, we will work through the data from today during tonight and make the required changes in order to meet tomorrow’s objective of getting more short-run performance from the STR12. Overall, a satisfying start to the first race weekend of 2017.