FP1
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 21-25°C / 34-44.°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:40.828 (13th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid No time set
Quickest time: N. Rosberg (1:38.037)
FP2
Weather: Warm and dry
Air & Track Temperatures: 24-27°C / 38-45°C
V Bottas, FW38-03, PU106C Hybrid 1:38.723 (10th)
F Massa, FW38-02, PU106C Hybrid 1:39.214 (14th)
Quickest time: K. Raikkonen (1:36.896)
Objectives: Aero evaluations, set up and tyre work.
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It was a difficult morning for us with the problems on Felipe’s car. Safety of the drivers is of paramount importance to us, so after FP1 and before FP2 we had to ensure we had fixed the problem. The issue had ramifications on what we did at the start of FP2, which then had further ramifications and compromised our low fuel and high fuel runs. As a group, we recovered well. We’ve got some good information now, we’ve set the cars up differently and we’ve got some interesting data to go through. We’ve learnt something about the cars on the supersoft tyres and Valtteri’s run on the medium looked quite good as well, so it’s a good recovery. We have a lot to look at tonight to prepare for qualifying and the race because we haven’t got as many laps in on either fuel level as we would like. Rain is a possibility tomorrow, we’re supposed to get some in the late afternoon so we have to take that into account. It may rain all day or we may just have a wet qualifying, we’ll just have to deal with whatever comes.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a difficult start to the day with the problem we had in FP1, but the team did a good job between sessions to fix the issues and I think we understand what happened now. The long runs this afternoon felt consistent but we need to wait until tomorrow in qualifying to determine our speed. I think we can have a good weekend; we just need to work hard.
Felipe Massa: It was definitely not an easy day. We had the issue in the morning but I’m confident it has been solved. Because of the morning, we lost a lot of mileage today and we need to concentrate 100% on being competitive tomorrow.
No comment