Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer: One of our main objectives for FP1 was for the drivers to get to know the circuit, as it’s very long and quite complicated. As Sergey hadn’t previously driven in Singapore, this was particularly important. We also conducted several aerodynamic tests on each car. In FP2, we did our first running on the hypersoft, we didn’t make as big a performance step as other teams appear to have. The overall car pace is not good at all. In addition, Lance had a rear brake fire, which unfortunately lost him his long running this evening. We think this is due to a driver’s helmet tear-off, which blocked the brake duct. Overall, it has not been a great day and we need to do a lot of work to improve for tomorrow.
Lance Stroll: We got some good running in and covered a good number of laps, so we learnt a lot. We are struggling with grip and just outright pace this weekend. It is the nature of the track, as high downforce doesn’t suit our car. At the end I had a small fire in the right rear brake due to a tear off. I am not sure if it was my tear off or someone else’s, but it was unlucky. We will see what happens tomorrow, as it’s another day. Last year I started 18th and finished eighth, so who knows what will happen – maybe a bit of rain!
Sergey Sirotkin: It has been a difficult Friday, in FP1 we looked very reasonable with the tyre compound and we had a lot of margin. But, that wasn’t the case in FP2, with the sun going down and with lower track temperatures we were expecting to see improvements from FP1.The outcome of both sessions wasn’t what we expected today, so we have a lot of work to do tonight to make sure we maximise everything ahead of tomorrow.
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