21/06/2019
NEWS STORY
Carlos Sainz: "An interesting day overall with a lot of testing. I think the first question mark was the tyre performance today, as it was quite different to other races and a very different feeling across all three compounds. I've been testing some experimental things today and they don't always work to perfection. However, I was still P8, so it shows we have potential for tomorrow.
"Running very different set-ups compared to the other car means we have gathered a lot of valuable data for the future. Tomorrow we'll go back to more normal settings, take things that we've learned today from Lando's car, and hopefully have a strong quali for the team."
Lando Norris: "It's been a good day, and to be honest a much better start to the weekend than in Canada for me. It's a cool track, Turn 11 is the best where I hardly touch the brakes. Position-wise it looks quite promising, although in Canada the car was very quick on Friday, but even though we were still quick, the rest of the weekend we dropped back slightly, so we're cautious.
"We tried a lot of stuff today and hopefully we can put all of that together on the car tomorrow and we can have a positive day. As a team, we've done a good job, the pace looks promising and if we can improve the car a little we should have a good qualifying. There's a lot of improvements to be made and we just need to keep pushing."
Andrea Stella, Performance Director: "They were busy sessions today that included lots of testing of car parts and also set-up options. It was hot and windy so it was good to complete plenty of laps to adapt to these conditions, finalise car set-up and to understand tyre behaviour.
"Overall it was a decent Friday but we've already seen many times this season that on Saturday and Sunday, the competition gets tighter. So we keep working and preparing the best we possibly can for what we know will be a close qualifying and race."
Check out our Friday gallery from Le Castellet, here.