Мерцедес за петък


Люис Хамилтън:
It's always a shock to the system when you first get in the car here in Singapore because it's very bumpy, it's a long lap and it's so hot out there - it's like a sauna in the car. But it's been a solid first day, we got through our run plan and continued to improve the car, so I'm really happy with it. I felt much better in the car today than I have for a while, so I hope I can keep that feeling over the weekend. They re-did a few bits of tarmac on the circuit and I managed to get the tyres working well. If you can get into a groove and into a rhythm here, it's such a beautiful lap, so I've really been enjoying it. But nothing's ever perfect and we definitely have some areas that we can still improve on. We've got off to a good start, but the Red Bulls looked very quick and we still have to put it all together tomorrow, which is not going to be easy.
Валтери Ботас:
It's been a tricky day. I had a bit of an off moment at the end of FP1, which ended my running a little early. I lost the back end in Turn 19 and at this track with no run-off you pay the price. In the late session, I was lacking pace on every run and on both compounds, so I'm not quite sure everything was right with the car. It just felt like I couldn't go any quicker, so we'll need to have a look at that. I felt friction in the steering system, so I struggled to feel the car properly. I think it's going to be close between three teams tomorrow, so we'll have to push, especially in Q3.
Андрю Шовлин:
We've not always had an easy time at this track but it looks like the car is working pretty well here this year. Lewis has had a very solid day, the pace looked good on low and high fuel and he's been happy with the car from the first run. There is always time to find on a circuit like this as the better the balance, the more the driver can push to the limit but we have a good baseline to work from with him. Valtteri has not had an easy day, he got caught out by a rear snap going into Turn 19 on the second run that finished his first session and caused quite a lot of damage. The car was repaired in impressive time, but he wasn't really comfortable at any stage in the second session so we've got a bit of work to do, picking through the data and seeing if we can spot anything that might be causing a problem. We were called to the see the stewards for a fuel temperature breach in the first session. We'd manage to set this to the wrong target temperature but luckily it was only a practice session otherwise we'd have received more than a fine.