We improved the car through the day and by the end of the session it was ok; not ideal but certainly not a disaster either. It wasn’t easy to get the tyres up to temperature today, but it’s pretty cold at the circuit so that’s not too much of a surprise. If we can get the tyres working better it will be an improvement for sure, but it’s not going to change the world. We’ll be looking at how to get them a bit warmer for qualifying tomorrow and then see what the weather does. After that, we’ll do the best we can.

It was more or less a normal Friday for us. This morning was obviously a wet session so we worked on setup for those conditions, then in the afternoon we tested the prototype tyres and completed some long runs. It’s quite hard to get the tyres switched on in these conditions as the surface here is very smooth, so with low temperatures it’s a bit more tricky to build up the energy in the rubber; more so with the mediums but even with the super softs. It’s meant to be quite warm on Sunday which is always a good thing for us, so we’ll try to get the maximum from the car in qualifying tomorrow and go from there.

We’re fairly happy with our single lap pace, but we weren’t as comfortable as we usually are on high fuel levels. Both drivers also complained about a lack of tyre temperature, but with warmer temperatures forecast for Sunday this shouldn’t be too much to worry about. We didn’t learn too much in the morning in the damp conditions, other than getting some worthwhile laps on the intermediate tyres to ensure we’re happy in case of a wet qualifying session. In the afternoon we ran all three types of dry tyre – including the developmental spec – so we’ve got a good amount of data to collate overnight. Kimi’s session ended early as we made a precautionary stop related to the rear brakes, but it’s nothing of concern for the rest of the weekend.