29/02/2024
NEWS STORY
Lando Norris: "It's been a reasonable day. I'm happy with how Thursday went overall.
"We made some progress with the car, there are still plenty of things to improve on, but we improved the balance and I got more comfortable, which is a good thing. I didn't do a great job in putting a lap together, so it wasn't a very representative day on the timesheets, but overall, a good first day and a good start to the weekend."
Oscar Piastri: "It was a good session. I felt like we were pretty competitive in both low and high fuel running. It'll be interesting to see what we're like tomorrow, but I think it was a pretty solid day overall. I was happy with my driving, and we got some good information out of the session. It will be interesting to see what the grid is like when all the sandbags are gone, but I think we're about where we expected to be and we're in a good place going into tomorrow."
Andrea Stella, Team Principal: "Overall, a productive first day of practice. We had no major issues and we got through our test programme. Even though we've had three days of testing, there is always a lot to finalise when it comes to the race weekend, and today we worked on setup. It was also important to develop our understanding of the tyres in conditions that were colder in comparison to the test.
"Oscar had a good session both on new tyres and long runs, while Lando couldn't complete his single timed lap on the Soft, which meant his position in the classification was not very meaningful. But we're happy with the information we've acquired, and we seem to be in a decent position to score points. We'll try to maximise our package tomorrow and put ourselves in the best position for the rest of the weekend."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Bahrain here.