7 March 2023 16:13 (UTC)
"We know there's quite a lot more to come"
Sochi Autodrom, Friday 24 September
Hear from McLaren Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo, and Executive Director, Racing, Andrea Stella after practice for the Russian Grand Prix.
FP1 | 1m35.959s (+1.532s) | 24 laps | 8th |
FP2 | 1m34.154s (+0.561s) | 17 laps | 4th |
“Today was a bit up and down – we struggled quite a bit in P1, but we made quite a few changes on the car for the second session which improved things. That progress has made me feel a bit more confident in the car this afternoon and given us a more positive feeling going into tomorrow.
“Some of our strengths from Monza aren’t as obvious at this track, and there’s more of the types of corners here where we’re not as strong. But it can still feel relatively good, it just doesn’t always translate into actual lap-time. We’re not as competitive as we were in Monza, but we still have a decent feeling and we can still be competitive compared to the teams we’re really racing against. There are a lot of things to take into account for tomorrow with the weather forecast, so there’s a lot to think about overnight to prepare ourselves for tomorrow.”
FP1 | 1m36.877s (+2.450s) | 23 laps | 14th |
FP2 | 1m35.630s (+2.037s) | 12 laps | 17th |
“This morning, we struggled quite a bit to get comfortable and there wasn’t that much pace. We made some changes with swapping the PU for FP2, but then we had a delay getting out, and then we had yellows, red flags and then people around us on high fuel. It was a bit of a lost session really, so we have some homework tonight. Fortunately, Lando looked more comfortable and quicker in FP2, so we’ll try to learn from that. For us, not the most inspiring day, but still a lot we can work on to improve ahead of qualifying.”
“Weather conditions in Sochi are unsettled this week. We had rain yesterday and there’s an expectation of rain tomorrow, but today the sessions were dry, and we could work through our dry run-plan. We focused our efforts on understanding the tyres and set-up, preparing the car for both single-lap performance and for the race, as usual. On Daniel’s side of the garage we had a little disruption, discovering an issue at the end of FP1. We swapped the PU over the break between P1 and P2, lost a little bit of running time and as a result were doing our new Soft run in P2 in difficult traffic conditions. That’s reflected in the classification – but we know there’s quite a lot more to come.”
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