Russian Grand Prix 2021 – Practice

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: We have had a useful and productive day. Nicholas had some issues with his brakes this morning, but this was fixed for FP2. The car is working well here and although there is definitely some scope for improvement, we are happy with our start to the weekend.

Given the weather forecast for tomorrow, it is unclear quite how the weekend will play out. However, we are happy with the work that we have done so far, and we are ready to face any eventuality. Both drivers are comfortable with their cars and so even if we don’t get much done in FP3 due to the rain, we are happy to go straight into both qualifying and the race.

George Russell: It was an interesting day today. The car was feeling good, but the pace wasn’t quite as good as the car was feeling. We will go away and analyse why that was overnight. That positive feeling definitely helped us on the high-fuel pace though, and hopefully that will benefit us if it is dry on Sunday. Tomorrow looks like it could be a washout, but fingers crossed that we get some running in at some point. Our performance at Spa definitely gives us added confidence if it is a wet qualifying, but it is a very different style of track and different conditions here in Sochi so we will need to put in the hard work to achieve a good result. If it is going to be dry on Sunday, it will be interesting as the circuit will be very green after the rain and that will make it tricky, so it is not going to be a straightforward weekend.

Nicholas Latifi: Today was a fairly tricky day of running, but we made some good improvements from one session to the next which is important. I still feel that we have some things that we can analyse tonight to try and get the car in a better window, and I’ll be looking at the changes I can make to my driving style to find some more lap time. Whilst tomorrow’s weather conditions might mean that a lot of today’s running may not be so relevant, everyone will be in the same position and what we’ve learnt today becomes especially valuable if it’s drier on Sunday.