Fri: Renault, Toro Rosso, Manor, Sauber

Editor

At the back of the grid, Toro Rosso suffered a disappointing afternoon as they failed to gain the pace expected from them.

Renault:
Kevin Magnussen:
“The car was a bit of a handful in the morning so we worked on dialling out the understeer and improving the ride to enable faster and more consistent laps. We got ourselves to a better balance for the afternoon and the degradation was better than we expected. Physically I feel fine in the car, it’s just like being back in the office, so there are no areas of concern in that regard. Tomorrow we want to be further up the order as Sunday should be an interesting race.”

Jolyon Palmer: “We’ve not set the world alight for pace today but we’ve been able to work through our programme and we’re confident to be able to take a step forward tomorrow. It’s a great track and it feels really special to blast through the trees. We saw in Spa that we could improve significantly between Friday and Saturday so we’re looking for something similar here in Monza.”

Toro Rosso:
Carlos Sainz:
“I think it’s been a busy Friday, as expected. There was a lot of testing going on in the background during both practice sessions and I’m happy to have tried everything and completed the run plan. Obviously, I’m not so satisfied with the pace, but we expected this here… Now it’s time to work hard tonight and see how to get a bit closer to the top ten.”

Daniil Kvyat: “It was a productive Friday. We gathered plenty of data, important for our knowledge, and we now have a lot of work to do. This track isn’t an easy one for us so we have a bit of a difficult weekend ahead.”

Manor:
Pascal Wehrlein:
“Monza is a very different track to Spa, so we were testing different aero parts on the car this morning to find solutions. We did improve in this afternoon session, which I am happy about. There is still a lot of work to do as we are not yet where we want to be, especially for Monza, but there is more potential in the car and we can work on that tomorrow.”

Esteban Ocon: “Overall it was a pretty good day, except at the end. Sometimes you get problems, but I’m pretty happy with the pace. We have to keep working that way, with one more practice tomorrow. We couldn’t do the long runs but we managed to do the short runs, which is good preparation to our qualifying. I’m feeling positive. I’d like to think we can be in a good position tomorrow.”

Sauber:
Marcus Ericsson: “It was a good Friday. We tried all the different compounds – medium, soft and supersoft – and got some data on low as well as high-fuel runs. We continued to work on our aero package that we introduced in Spa. All in all it was a positive day during which we gathered interesting information.”

Felipe Nasr: “It was again another useful Friday. In the morning we focused on further analysis on the aero package. Thus, FP1 was dedicated to a lot of work on the aerodynamic side of the car. Later on in the afternoon we were able to do short and long-runs on different tyre compounds. It is positive that we were also able to do a race simulation. I feel we still have some work to do for the rest of the weekend, but overall it was a good Friday.”