Another good Friday. It’s always good news to finish again in the top 10 – today top seven – cars, even though it is only practice. My run plan has been more race-biased than normal today, as obviously we’re trying to prepare for the race knowing that I’m going to take a penalty for Sunday. Even so, the only short run I did looked competitive, which I guess today only makes the penalty feel a bit more painful. However, it is what it is, and there’s no point losing energy on that. My focus is on the race and our long runs also looked decent, so I prefer to look on the bright side and keep preparing for Sunday.

On the whole, a reasonable Friday. It could’ve been a little better, and it wasn’t the cleanest of days with a few red flags here and there which changed everything around a bit. But we got a good understanding of the car: where it’s weak, where it’s strong, areas we need to improve. Overall, that’s the main thing. I focused a bit more on long running today, something I didn’t really do at Paul Ricard, and that helped me to get an understanding of the race balance for Sunday. We’re going to have look over things tonight and see how to improve the car for tomorrow.

We had a busy couple of sessions, at what is a very interesting and challenging track, with a mix of aerodynamic set-ups and tyre tests to go through. Despite some delays during the sessions, we completed our programme. Ambient temperatures are quite extreme this weekend, causing a hot track and an intense and gusty wind, which made driving quite challenging as we saw today with yellow and red flags. Carlos’ run plan was oriented towards race preparation, as we have to start from the back of the grid for the PU penalty. Lando’s run plan was more normal. Hot conditions are likely to continue and we will review what we've learnt today, optimise the package and finalise our preparation for qualifying and the race. We expect another very tight midfield fight.