Fri: Williams, Ferrari, STR

Editor

Felipe Massa topped a rain-interrupted second session at Sochi on Friday with Sebastian Vettel second.

Williams
Felipe Massa: “We weren’t able to complete a lot of laps today with the wet weather in the afternoon and the spillage that disrupted the morning session. The laps we did complete gave us some understanding of the track and what it’s like in wet conditions, but it’s difficult to say where we are compared to other teams at this stage because there weren’t many cars out on track. Tomorrow morning will be busy for everyone and we need to make sure we make the most of the final practice session.”

Valtteri Bottas: “The track conditions made today difficult to get a full testing programme complete but it was the same for everyone. We still tried to maximise both of the sessions and we managed to learn a few things about the tyres and how the car performs in wet conditions. We now need to make a good plan for FP3 because, like in Japan, it will be a very important session to get us ready for qualifying and the race.”

Ferrari
Sebastian Vettel: “Today we did learn a few things, but nothing that we can really use for the weekend. The first impression of the car is good, but I can’t really say a lot more as we really didn’t get enough track action today. This morning we couldn’t drive much as some of the corners were covered with Diesel fuel, and it took a while to clean it all up. In the afternoon it started raining, but tomorrow and Sunday it is supposed to be dry! In general, it won’t be easy to get into the right rhythm, as the track tomorrow will feel the same like… yesterday. That is, green and with poor grip. Usually, you use the Friday to lay some rubber down, but that was not possible today.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “Today the weather conditions were not very nice, we could not get much running and we learned pretty much nothing. The first practice was dry, but at the beginning of the session there was an issue with the tarmac surface and they had to wash it away. So we lost time and when we got to the track some parts were still wet. In the second session, the weather turned out to be a bit tricky and it rained most of the time. It’s one of those days you do absolutely nothing but that’s how it goes. It was not ideal today but it was the same for everybody. Hopefully tomorrow it will be dry, and we’ll see how the tires work. We’ll do our normal program and try to make the best out of it.”

Toro Rosso
Max Verstappen: “It was not a very eventful day, as we didn’t get a lot of track time unfortunately. This morning in FP1 we were not able to do a proper run because of the diesel on the track in Sector 2, which remained quite wet. This wasn’t great for us, because we didn’t learn as much as we wanted to. Then just before FP2 it started to rain heavily, so there was a lot of waiting as the track was very wet. But in the end we did some wet running and it was very positive. I think we can be happy with our afternoon!”

Carlos Sainz: “It hasn’t been a very productive Friday as we didn’t complete many laps – this morning’s delay because of the diesel spill and this afternoon’s rain didn’t help. It’s not the ideal situation, especially if you are a rookie arriving at a new track, but we had a bit of a similar situation in Japan and we still had a good weekend. Today it was so slippery out there! I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s FP3, hopefully it will be dry and we can achieve all the information we need in a short amount of time and get ready for qualifying.”