FP1
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 22-23°C / 29-33°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:35.174 (12th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:35.006 (10th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:32.294)
FP2
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 20-21°C / 22-25°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:32.792 (8th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:32.873 (10th)
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:31.001)
Objectives: Aero evaluations, set up and tyre work.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a key day for us because we missed out on so much work in Melbourne due to the weather during practice. The good news is, that we’ve got through the majority of that work now. We’ve definitely learnt a lot about the car which has been really good and we can take that through to tomorrow, to help us improve the car pace. Tyre work has been really interesting as well. We just need to put it all together now. There’s a lot to look at tonight, but I think it is fairly clear what we need to do and where we are heading. The low fuel runs were good and put us about where we expected to be. The high fuel runs were also very encouraging as they were better than what we saw in the Melbourne race. In addition, we’ve got some further upgrades coming for tomorrow which will put us in even better shape.
Valtteri Bottas: We managed to complete our running as planned with no issues at all so it’s been a good day. The car felt better in the evening practice session with the lower temperatures and less wind, which is good as we need the car to be at its best at the same time of day for qualifying and the race. We can still improve, but what was encouraging was the consistency we showed in long runs on the medium tyre.
Felipe Massa: It was a normal Friday for us really. We were focusing on trying to understand the balance of the car, how it performs on different tyres, and we completed some good long runs at the end. We have collected a lot of information today and now we’ll be trying to understand it to make improvements for tomorrow.
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