Fri: Haas, Renault, Sauber, Manor

Haas:
Romain Grosjean: “It was good to be back in the car. Sochi’s a track I quite like. We didn’t have a very easy day trying to assess how to work our tires and how to work the car. We can improve and make the car better. Hopefully, we can find those answers for tomorrow, as our performance is not exactly where we want it to be right now. Again, it’s all about working and learning everything. We’re struggling a little bit today, but I’m sure the guys are going to react well.”

Esteban Gutierrez: “I’m pretty happy how the day went overall, as we managed to complete a lot of laps. We’re not as competitive as I would have hoped, but we gathered a lot of data today. We’ll be looking over that to try and optimize our set-up as much as we can. In FP1 we had a small interruption this morning, and then this afternoon we looked to be heading in the right direction. We’re still working on our setup with the supersoft tyres, so I think FP3 will be important for us to get a good reference for qualifying.”

Renault:
Kevin Magnussen: “First impressions are okay after today and the car isn’t too bad here. Evaluating the tyres was the main job in FP2 and the track was fairly consistent throughout the session. It’s quite distinct with the tyres here actually; there is no big difference between the soft and super soft tyres and there is very low degradation so it’ll be interesting for the race. We have a few things to work on before tomorrow’s morning practice session, though the pace we showed today is probably not far from where we are. Hopefully we can have qualifying with no mistakes or issues, then take it onto the race and seize any opportunities that come our way.”

Jolyon Palmer: “I wasn’t able to get a good balance or find the sweet spot today which is always a little frustrating. Fortunately, we’ve had a good reliable day with both cars so there’s plenty of data for us to work from to make improvements for tomorrow. The track’s quite slippery out there but we accumulated a lot of laps without drama. We just need to dial-out the unwanted oversteer and I think there’s more pace to come.”

Sauber:
Felipe Nasr: “I was able to complete the programme as planned today. I covered a decent mileage, which was important in order to understand how the tyres behave compared to last year. The car is a lot more together compared to the previous race weekends. I was satisfied with the pace on soft tyres, but we have to work more on the supersoft compound. We tried some set-up work for the run on supersoft tyres, which did not work out as we wanted it to. We have to analyse this, but I think there is room for improvement.”

Marcus Ericsson: “It was not the ideal Friday for me. Nevertheless, I ran many laps today gathering a lot of information on the car-side. This track has a unique asphalt, which makes it challenging to get the tyres to work. We saw it last year, and again today, and I have been struggling to get the tyres in the right window. We have tried different set-ups, but we are not going in the right direction yet. We have to look into the data and see what we can make better for the rest of the weekend.”

Manor:
Pascal Wehrlein: “It was a difficult day today. The track was very slippery and so we struggled with a really low grip level. As more and more rubber goes down the conditions will keep improving so we remain positive for the rest of the weekend. We’ll have a good look at the data tonight and see what we have to do to prepare for a better day tomorrow.”

Rio Haryanto: “During the first session, we had a problem with the steering rack, so we lost about an hour of track time, but it was good that we still made it out before the end of the session. The mechanics did a very good job. Overall we’ve completed some good low and high fuel runs, so we collected a lot of data and looking at the pace it was also pretty good, but we still need to improve to get closer to the other teams.”