Paul Williams, Chief Engineer - Trackside Performance: "We spent most of today learning and looking to the future, working as a team to collect some data both for the remainder of the season but also very much looking forward to next year's car and our development programme on that.

"We know the limitations of this car and struggle on the medium- and high-speed corners so are exposed here in sector one, but this is one of the easiest circuits to overtake on so the focus for us this evening will be making sure we have got the car underneath us for long runs and can keep rear tyre degradation under control on Sunday."

Carlos Sainz: "We knew it was going to be a tough circuit for us; the medium to high speed longer corners just don't suit our car, so we chose to use FP1 to try different setups and gather some data which will help us to prepare for next year. For FP2 we went back to a normal run plan and unfortunately the performance struggles proved to match the expectation. Having said that, the weekend is only getting started and we will continue to dig into the data and try to improve as much as possible for both qualifying and the race."

Alex Albon: "That's Friday finished with and it was a tricky day overall. We utilised FP1 to do an aero testing programme to gather data for both this season and to help the development of the 2027 car. Currently there's a lot of work to do, and a lot to debrief overnight, but let's see what the rest of the weekend brings."

Check out our Friday gallery from COTA here.