On a whole we’re happy to take home a handful of points from the first race. There’s a lot more work we can do to improve. We know that, and we have to keep the developments coming if we’re to edge away from the midfield group. It was nice to take some rest between leaving Australia and heading to Bahrain. It’s usually a bit lighter in terms of my schedule for the week. It is very hot, even though we qualify and race at night when it’s significantly cooler. The sun starts low for the race and then we drive into the darkness. FP1 and FP3 are slightly trickier and not run under representative conditions. Track temperature swings around over the weekend, so it’s important to keep on top of set-up changes.

I’ve had a bit of rest and recovery between these two race weekends, so I head to Bahrain feeling recharged. It’s a circuit I’ve always enjoyed racing at. There are some decent overtaking spots on a lap, and it will be interesting to see if there’s any difference in cars following each other there especially down the main straight. Turn 1 is a good place to send one, usually there are two, three, maybe four cars battling down there on race day. Turn 4 as well can be a nice place to pass if you can find some speed through Turns 2 and 3. Hopefully we can be in amongst it this weekend, but first we need to ensure we’re quick in qualifying and be at the top end of the midfield.

We are determined to show more in Bahrain. We have to underline the step we’ve made on the engine side, and the second Grand Prix of 2019 is an opportunity to showcase that. We will bring some aero updates, as we will do at every race. We also need to target consistency over the course of the entire weekend, delivering a balanced and reliable car in all sessions to allow the drivers to extract respective maximum performance. Equally, we need to target operational excellence in all areas.

Australia was a mixed weekend. We didn’t qualify where the cars deserved to be in terms of pace and that was down to execution in some areas and a reliability problem which is now understood. It shows the midfield is so close and that any small mistake or dip in performance means you’ll lose places on the grid. In Bahrain, we have some bodywork updates linked to cooling to deal with the heat as well as some mechanical and aero updates: it’s about pushing on and developing the cars quickly in order to add performance.