It is always difficult to judge how you compare after day one as not everyone is pushing 100%. Today we mostly concentrated on setting up the car with very low downforce. Of course we know this won’t be our strongest track so we are focusing on getting as close as we can on the short runs. Our long run pace doesn’t look bad at the moment either so I’m quite happy with that, with a bit more grip it should be even better. We have to be realistic, fifth and sixth is about where we expect to be around here due to our power deficit but we are trying to optimise everything on the car to be as close as we can. Over the last few days the chance of rain has decreased which is a bit of a shame as this helps us close the gap. Already the orange flares have been lit which is great to see, it’s nice to see so many fans out here supporting me on a Friday.

This morning I had some issues and the mechanics had to take the back off the car, which was time consuming, so I only completed one timed lap. Maybe they thought I needed an extended summer break (laughs) but I was definitely ready to drive. This afternoon we made lots of changes and went back and forth on set-up. We learnt quite a lot but I felt that maybe as we improved one thing we created a problem with something else. With the limited running we haven’t found the optimum balance yet and need to improve on both short and long runs. We will do a bit of homework tonight to find the best compromise and some more pace.