15/03/2019
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez: "It's always a good feeling to be back in the car for the start of the season, but we are not yet where we want to be in terms of competitiveness. These first two sessions were quite difficult for me and I am not really happy with the balance of the car and the tyres yet. We had many new parts on the car today and we still need to fully understand them, so we tried to come up with the best possible compromise for tomorrow. It's hard to know where we stand compared to the other teams after just one day of practice, but we know the midfield pack is very close so anything we can find overnight will be beneficial."
Lance Stroll: "It's not easy to take too many conclusions from today's sessions. We ran through a big test programme trying to understand the new aero parts, but it was quite windy and that always makes things a bit trickier. It is early days, but the midfield pack is very close together so every tenth is going to count in qualifying. We will go through the data tonight, work on a couple of weaknesses and come back stronger tomorrow. The car overall feels good, the ingredients are there, we just have to make a few adjustments and I think we can be right there in the fight."
Otmar Szafnauer: "We've had a solid first day in Melbourne. We clocked up 119 laps, tried the three tyre compounds available to us, and have enough data to help our decision making tonight. Track conditions were pretty reasonable from the start but the wind was strong throughout the day. One of the priorities was evaluating our new aero package and we split a number of test items across the cars. Early indications are encouraging but we still need to work through and understand all the information collected today. The middle of the grid looks very tight so maximising qualifying is going to be especially important because overtaking is never easy around Albert Park."
Check out our Friday gallery from Melbourne, here.