As usual, this will certainly be a hot weekend. I enjoy the track, and it has a good rhythm to it. The conditions during the weekend are always tricky because practice is during the day and then qualifying and the race are at night. This means there is a lot of adapting going on throughout the weekend. However, I think it is going to be a good one and am looking forward to getting back there.

I can’t wait for the weekend to begin. It was a very tough weekend in Melbourne and I really feel like I need another shot to bring us back to where we think we deserve to be, and to start everything from zero, and to try and get some confidence back in all of us. I know the track quite well and I think it suits some strong points of our car. I’m looking forward to it and let’s see what we can do.

Bahrain is a great track with a unique atmosphere under the lights as darkness falls in the desert. It is a tricky race for car setup, as FP1 and FP3 occur in the afternoon with very high track temperatures and do not represent the cooler conditions seen in the twilight sessions for qualifying and the race. Therefore, FP2 is extremely important for our preparation. It will be interesting to see how the 2018 tyres perform in Bahrain and if they throw up more variety in race strategies. It is the first normal race track of the 2018 season with more predictable weather, so we should get a more representative comparison of the underlying performance of each team. After Sergey’s unfortunate DNF in Australia from a freak plastic bag, we hope to get him to complete his first race distance and that Lance can show well at his second year at this circuit.