Mexican GP: Practice team notes - AlphaTauri

05/11/2021
NEWS STORY

Pierre Gasly: "I must say, I'm very happy with today. We've finished both sessions in the top six and there are lot of positives with the car so far, I think we can even find some more performance tomorrow. It's really slippery out there, which doesn't feel great, but we're still very competitive, so I'm really pleased. Looking to the race, the tyres felt pretty good as well. We know that usually here in Mexico the track isn't so tough on the Hards, especially compared to last time out in Austin, but we're happy with the long-running we've done so far, which we now need to analyse ahead of Sunday."

Yuki Tsunoda: "I'm quite happy with today, I think the balance of the car has been good and we've shown strong pace straight from FP1. We've obviously got the penalty, which means that our approach to Qualifying will be slightly different, but we've still collected a lot of important data for the engineers to analyse tonight. Mainly my focus is on the race, more so than the one lap pace for Qualifying, so I've done a lot of long-running today and I feel comfortable in the car so far."

Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer): "We've been able to hit the ground running here in Mexico, showing a good performance and completing our test plan. This weekend we needed to take a PU penalty with Yuki, so he will start from the back of the grid, therefore his focus has been on long-runs, in preparation for the race. Even so, he was still able to have an excellent short-run performance and continue building his confidence in the car. For Pierre, it was a more normal Friday plan with the focus on learning about the tyres and optimising the setup for the conditions we face this weekend. The track was very dirty and dusty in FP1, so the overall grip and balance was poor. This improved through the day, but we still didn't reach a balance we were fully satisfied with, so there is more to find in the short-runs tomorrow. Overall, it was a solid Friday, the performance is good and we still have room to improve, so we'll give it our all to challenge for good points on Sunday."

Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City, here.

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Published: 05/11/2021
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