Not a lot to say about today. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go out due to safety conditions with the helicopter. It’s a shame not to drive in the wet because I always enjoy it, and not to get a feel with the new parts that we’re bringing this weekend. We’ll need to hit the ground running tomorrow and make sure we get everything on point to have a strong qualifying and race. It looks to be a different and challenging weekend compared to normal with the cold temperatures, wind and on a different track, so we’ll do our best to put everything together.

I think the main thing for us is that we had a few different parts on the car for this weekend. So, for all these parts we need the time to understand how they’re helping the car, what impact they have and whether we need to change the rest of the balance of the car for them. It will make our lives a bit more difficult tomorrow in FP3 to try to understand but also carry that information into qualifying.
Learning about tyres, the track and aerodynamics was our main plan for today, but it would’ve been tricky anyway in conditions like this in the rain: so much harder to get a good read of the car. I would’ve enjoyed driving today because these conditions are normally good fun. The weather’s still looking challenging for Sunday – and tomorrow possibly as well.

We all want to go racing and it is always disappointing whenever a day is lost to bad weather – perhaps more so at a circuit that we’ve not visited in seven years. There are always decisions we need to take on Friday evening, and today we’ll have to make those based upon a combination of data from our simulations and what we can extrapolate from races at circuits with similar characteristics.
Looking at the weather forecast, there is a chance FP3 will be dry. We’ll have a great deal of work to do testing and analysing tyre and aero performance. The drivers will be busy familiarising themselves with this very technical layout, that neither have visited before with a Formula 1 car. We have to work hard to get into a good position for qualifying and give ourselves the best chance of scoring good points on Sunday. We feel very sorry for the spectators who turned up today and hope that we can give them something to enjoy over the rest of the weekend.