I’m feeling happy with how things have gone today – it’s been a positive start to our Mexican Grand Prix weekend. We looked strong from the start of morning practice and we’ve taken some important steps to improve the car across the two sessions. It’s never easy finding the right balance here because the high altitude has a big impact on the car: you slide around more with the lack of downforce and it makes things quite tricky. It was important to cover so many laps today and we have a big job tonight to understand the tyres, the car balance and where we can improve ahead of qualifying.

It’s never ideal to miss a session because you always improve with every lap. For this reason, it was crucial I had as much track time as I could in FP2 and I have to say thank you to our crew. It wasn’t an easy job to get the car repaired in two hours but we managed it: their work gave me even more motivation to go out and do a good job. In terms of balance, the car still needs a bit of work: the feeling I have is not perfect yet, but there is plenty more to come ahead of qualifying tomorrow.

It was a very special feeling being on track in FP1 in front of my home crowd. I love the track and really wanted to put on a good show. Unfortunately I pushed a bit too hard and ended the session early. I turned in and lost the rear at the final corner. The track had quite low grip and several other cars did the same thing, but I made contact with the wall. I wanted to show the true performance of the car today, but it just didn’t happen. In the early part of the session I was working through some set-up items and I also ran with the halo for the first time.

It’s been a busy Friday. This morning we evaluated some updated parts, gathering data to understand their effects on the car. The red flags cost us some track time, but we split the programme between the cars and collected a huge amount of data. Alfonso was very unlucky, making a small error and clipping the wall. The track was changing very quickly and he got caught out. There is a lot of data to analyse tonight, working with our colleagues back at the factory in Silverstone to make sure we put the best possible car on track tomorrow. The data from short and long runs shows it’s going to be a tight weekend, but I feel we are in a good position going forward.