FP1 & FP2 - 2017 Belgian GP team quotes

Force India

Force India completed a busy day of practice in preparation for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.

ESTEBAN OCON

“The day was reasonably clean and tidy and I managed to cover a lot of laps – even with the red flag and the rain shower in second practice. The feeling with the car is already pretty good and things look promising for a strong performance tomorrow. This track is very impressive in a Formula One car and, as we expected, I was able to take Eau Rouge flat on my first lap.”

SERGIO PEREZ

“The morning session was compromised a little bit with a few small issues. We were changing a lot of things on the car so I didn’t do a huge amount of laps – not as many as we would have liked. The afternoon was better and I was beginning to find a good feeling with the car. The important thing is that we know where we need to work and the direction we need to take. So I’m feeling confident we will be in better shape tomorrow. As Esteban has shown, the pace of the car is quite competitive and we have a good opportunity to qualify well tomorrow.”

OTMAR SZAFNAUER, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

“It has been a fairly typical Spa Friday with a red flag this morning and heavy rain this afternoon. We started the day with both our cars out on track nice and early to allow us to progress with the test programme we had planned. The red flag compromised things slightly and Sergio didn’t have the smoothest session with some downtime in the garage. In the afternoon we thought the rain was coming and so we prioritised our runs to ensure we collected the most important tyre data with the race in mind. We’re not expecting much more rain over the weekend, but in Spa you can never predict the weather with a huge amount of confidence. The drivers are generally happy with the car balance, but there are some areas we can improve overnight which will give us more performance heading into qualifying.”

Williams

Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer

It wasn’t the best Friday of the year. Unfortunately, Felipe lost the car in Turn Seven on his first timed-lap with fairly heavy damage to the left-hand side of the car, including some damage to the chassis which we couldn’t repair. We’ve therefore changed his chassis and that will be re-scrutineered in the morning for him to run in FP3. As we were unable to get any more mileage for Felipe today it is a big loss in terms of the test programme we had, both parts and homework, for the weekend and indeed Felipe needed time in the car, given that he missed out on the Hungarian race. On Lance’s side we had a pretty good session in FP1, doing some aerodynamic tests. In FP2, due to various more lengthy changes, he only managed the running on low fuel before the rain came in and even then, within that there was traffic on his ultrasoft laps. So, not great on the timesheet but we’ve learned some good information so we’ll be doing a lot of work tonight to be in the best place for running tomorrow.

Lance Stroll

That was not where we were hoping to be. We are just struggling to carry speed through the corners and be as competitive as we want to be. We need to improve in the high-speed corners, as we are still suffering with the same kind of problems we faced in Silverstone and Austria. We just can’t seem to carry the entry speed in those typical high-loaded, long corners. We need to work on the balance for tomorrow and understand how we can be more competitive in FP3. But things can change, as we have a lot of people looking how to improve and I am sure after the briefing we will understand more.

Felipe Massa

A session to forget for me. On the first lap I had big oversteer in corner seven when I touched the inside kerb. It was my mistake and I feel really disappointed to do only one lap in the day. It’s not positive for the weekend because when you lose two sessions like that it’s difficult to understand everything about the car. Tomorrow will be a day to learn everything from zero. I think the session was not great for Lance as well, looking at the car it didn’t seem as competitive as we want to be yet. There’s a lot to learn and understand tomorrow, and I really hope we can improve.

Toro Rosso

Carlos Sainz

“It’s been a good day for us. We were a bit quicker than what we all expected before coming here, which is positive. On the other hand, we know that on Saturdays our competitors normally do a bigger step than us, so we need to keep an eye on them if we want to stay inside the top ten, but I’m happy with how we’ve started the weekend. Regarding the crazy weather, it doesn’t surprise me, this is Spa! This is the seventh time I race here and every time I’ve come this kind of thing happens, where it’s sunny one moment and the other it starts to rain… It’s typical from here and you just need to be ready for anything – I wouldn’t mind a bit of this tomorrow or Sunday!”

Daniil Kvyat

“A decent Friday. We were able to get plenty running in even though we had a few issues throughout the day – we will recover for tomorrow. FP3 will definitely be a busy one, but we know what we’re missing and what we need to do, so I’m confident we can end up doing a good job tomorrow and I look forward to the rest of the weekend.”

James Key (Technical Director)

“A little bit of mix fortunes today for the drivers. We had a reasonably straight-forward couple of sessions with Carlos – he was quite happy with the car from the start and we hit our targets with some of our set-up parameters for him. He looked reasonably good in FP1 and we were all quite happy with the performance. Nevertheless, we needed to make some changes for FP2 to make some further steps and see if we could attack some of the weaknesses we felt we had. We did this and generally seemed to go in the right direction; Carlos did a good job and gave clear feedback, so that was a positive day for him. Sadly, when the rain came we missed the opportunity – as did everyone else – to understand the crucial race information for these tyres. Regarding Daniil, not such a smooth ride… We had a few issues on his car, which meant that he wasn’t quite in the window that we expected for some of the set-up plans that we had for him, so we had to tune that out before we could begin to make progress. Considering that was the case also in FP1, he looked quite competitive knowing that he wasn’t entirely happy with the way the car was feeling for him, so that was also a good job for him. We then needed to make slightly bigger changes in FP2 – some of those changes appeared to give the desired effect, but we didn’t attack all the problems as well as we hoped, so there’s definitely more work to be done there. Unfortunately, his FP2 was compromised by some problems with the car, which we apologise to him for; it’s something we can see in the data but that’s not easily fixable in the session, so, sadly, we didn’t get to run the full programme to asses more set-up changes. We missed out there a bit but we’ll fix the problems overnight. However although we have work to do the underlying performance seem ok at present and we will work on both cars to make the steps needed for tomorrow.”

Haas F1

The 12th round of the 2017 FIA Formula One World Championship began with practice Friday at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps as teams prepared for the Belgian Grand Prix Sunday. Two 90-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 7.004-kilometer (4.352-mile), 19-turn circuit were run under disparate weather conditions.

Nestled in the Ardennes region of southeast Belgium, Spa-Francorchamps is the longest track in Formula One and produces some of the sport’s highest speeds, with average laps eclipsing 220 kph (137 mph). The venue is also known for quickly changing weather, and that was on display Friday, with FP1 run under a warm and sunny sky while FP2 began cloudy and ended with rain.

Haas F1 Team drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen attacked the undulating circuit, each logging 20 laps in FP1 and 15 laps in FP2. The duo ran similar programs throughout the day, beginning FP1 on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft tire before switching to the slightly grippier Red supersoft compound.

Magnussen set the 16th quickest time in FP1 with a 1:48.615 on his 11th lap and Grosjean followed in 17th with a 1:48.626 secured on his 15th lap. Both drivers set their quick times utilizing the Red supersofts.

Leading the way in FP1 was Scuderia Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen with a fast lap of 1:45.502. Just .053 of a second behind him was Mercedes pilot Lewis Hamilton while Räikkönen’s teammate, Sebastian Vettel, was third quickest, .145 of a second short of earning quick time.

Speeds picked up and lap times dropped in a rain-shortened FP2, with both Haas F1 Team drivers able to better their times from FP1. Grosjean wrapped FP2 as the 13th-quickest driver with a time of 1:47.285, which was 1.341 seconds better than his best lap in FP1. His quick time came on the 10th of his 15 laps shod on a set of Purple ultrasoft tires. Magnussen shaved 1.059 seconds off his FP1 time with a 1:47.556 earned on his ninth lap, also while utilizing the ultrasoft tire. He ended the session 16th overall.

Light rain moved in over turns five and nine with 30 minutes remaining before heavy rain with 20 minutes to go washed out the rest of FP2.

Atop FP2 was Hamilton, who pipped Räikkönen for the top spot by .262 of a second with a lap of 1:44.753. Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas, was third to sandwich the Ferrari driver, .427 of a second off the time set by Hamilton.

The track record at Spa remained untouched, but it appears set to fall when qualifying begins Saturday. Jarno Trulli currently owns the fastest lap at Spa – a 1:44.503 set in his Toyota during the second round of qualifying for the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix. Hamilton’s quick FP2 time was just .25 of a second shy of eclipsing Trulli’s eight-year-old mark.

Between the two sessions, Haas F1 Team ran a total of 70 laps with Grosjean and Magnussen recording 35 laps apiece.

Romain Grosjean

“Generally, we’ve been struggling a little bit on low downforce circuits and that seems to be the case here again at Spa. We’re trying to find the setup between drag and downforce, but we’re struggling a bit with it. We’re going to see where we can do better tonight, work hard, find the last few tenths and decide on the downforce level – which will be a big decision for us. It’s a tricky one getting everything to work and the right top speed. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll have slightly more performance and that’ll put us in a decent place.”

Kevin Magnussen

“I think we’ve got a lot of information from today on different things. There’s a lot to look at and analyze for tomorrow, so I’m keeping positive. I wouldn’t read too much into today. The challenge for tomorrow is looking at downforce levels and finding the right setup. That’s what’s going to be key. It was good fun driving these cars here, no surprises, but good fun.”

Gunther Steiner

“We always wanted to test two different levels of drag on this track, so we did that and came out with what we need to do. We had a little bit of an issue in FP2 at the beginning, with the DRS system, which was sorted pretty quickly. Tomorrow we go out again and we know which drag level to use and we’ll try to get a good setup for qualifying.”

Mercedes

Silver Arrows ready to attack again after summer break

— Lewis finished the morning session in P2 with Valtteri in P6
— Lewis ended the day in P1 with Valtteri in P3, with both ending the session early owing to rain
— Both drivers ran the SuperSoft compound tyre in FP1 and installed on the Soft
— Lewis then used the Soft and UltraSoft compound tyres in FP2, Valtteri the SuperSoft and UltraSoft

Lewis Hamilton

It’s great to be back! Today felt like one of our strongest Fridays so far this season. The car felt strong all-round straight out of the box. We made some good steps with the set-up right from the start of FP1, which is a really encouraging way to kick off the weekend. It looks tight at the top on the long-run pace, but we’ve started the weekend in the best way possible.

Valtteri Bottas

Overall, it was a tricky day. We had some trouble setting up the car and I didn’t feel too comfortable in the beginning. But in the end it was getting better, we made quite big steps. The performance of our car in general is looking good; however, there is still a lot of margin to optimise the car. The long runs in the end were interrupted by the rain, but that was obviously the same for everyone. I’m glad that we at least got a few laps in with high fuel.

Andrew Shovlin

The car is working pretty well, the drivers are quite happy with it on a single lap. The day was obviously affected by the rain at the end of the second session. We were not expecting it early on but then as the session progressed you could see the weather coming in. So we were trying to bring the programme forward a bit, as other teams were too. That has left us missing a bit of tyre data that we would normally have. We had new power units in the car which have been signed off well and we also brought our low-downforce package for this circuit which has performed in line with expectations. Overall, the drivers are reasonably pleased with the car but there are a few more unknowns than normal. We will work hard overnight to try and improve the car and fix the few issues that we’ve found in terms of the handling today.

Red Bull

MAX VERSTAPPEN

“An OK first day back here at Spa but nothing special. Between Daniel and myself we tried a few set-ups to improve speed on the straights, it’s somewhere we need to improve in order to fight so we are trying to find a good compromise. At the moment we don’t seem too far off the two top teams but it is only Friday, I’m sure it will be a different gap tomorrow. It’s hard here to find the set-up to be competitive on the straights but also balanced in the corners, we will make some steps in the right direction tonight, hopefully. In the dry I think we will be the solid third team like we have seen so far this season. Although it’s raining at the moment I don’t think there is much more forecast. This is a shame as it would definitely help us; fingers crossed we get a bit more for the race. There is already a lot of orange to be seen in the crowd and it’s only Friday, I’m expecting to see a lot more tomorrow and Sunday which is really great and nice to see so many fans supporting me, it always helps come race day.”

DANIEL RICCIARDO

“This track is always a bit of a compromise. The first and third sector is very fast and in the second sector you need the downforce. I tried to be quick in the first and third part, but the compromise wasn’t good enough. I still lost too much in the second sector. Yes there was some traffic as well and without that I could’ve probably gone a few tenths quicker but it still wouldn’t have put me in the Top 5. For sure we won’t keep the same set-up tomorrow. Whether we’ll go in Max’s direction or try to find a better compromise between the two we’ll see, but we’ll definitely be stronger tomorrow. The objective is not to lose too much time on the straights. For tomorrow it would be good if it was dry, because I’d like to try the ideal set-up and see how much potential we have.”

Renault F1

Renault Sport Formula One Team ended the first day of the Pirelli Belgian Grand Prix with Nico Hülkenberg leading the charge for the team with the seventh-fastest lap time, 1min 46.441secs. Jolyon Palmer posted the tenth-fastest time of the day, a 1min 46.670secs.

Between them in FP2, Nico and Jo completed 47 laps of the 7.004 km Spa Francorchamps circuit, the most of any team. Today’s session programmes ran without trouble, however rain interrupted the end of FP2.

Nico Hülkenberg

“It got a little fruity out there at the end of the day with the rain, but we had a decent Friday and could show decent enough pace in the dry. It was the usual work on set-up and we made positive steps to get a positive balance and harmony around the track. It’s going to be interesting to see what the weather does for the rest of the weekend as we didn’t expect as much rain as we saw today; that’s one of the delights of Spa.”

Jolyon Palmer

“I love Spa as a circuit so it was great to be able to get some good work done on the car throughout today’s sessions. By the end of FP1 the car felt pretty special. FP2 was interrupted by the rain, but we were able to get further understanding of the tyres before the heavens opened. It was a good start to my weekend so I’m hopeful it continues in a positive manner.”

Nick Chester, Technical Director, Chassis

“It was good to get back in action after the summer shutdown and it was a positive Friday for us. We evaluated aero updates in the morning which performed as expected and will be retained for the rest of the weekend. Both drivers made strong progress on set-up over the course of the day, even if rain stopped play a little early. We’ve got a decent baseline with the car for the weekend ahead.”

McLaren

A relatively smooth Friday in both practice sessions for McLaren Honda. Both sides of the garage opted to use both sessions to conduct aero evaluations and work on various set-ups and balance configurations for the rest of the weekend.

In FP1, both drivers reported issues with the DRS, which led to a couple of brief stoppages. Despite an additional short hiatus for a red flag, as well as set-up changes between runs, both were able to clock up good mileage to prepare the team for qualifying and beyond. At his home race, Stoffel finished the session in 10th position, and Fernando in 13th.

The second session began productively, with further evaluations and handling changes. In typical Spa style, the weather turned on its head 20 minutes before the end of FP2, drenching the track quick enough to render it too saturated even for Wet compound tyres. Thus, the team elected to conclude both drivers’ running early in order to avoid taking any unnecessary risks on track. Fernando set the session’s 11th fastest time, while Stoffel finished the day in 14th.

FERNANDO ALONSO

“Spa is probably the best circuit in the world, and every lap you do here is magic. Having said that, we lose so much on the straights, but then we gain in the corners, so it’s a difficult weekend for us here.

“We didn’t have a great day today, especially in the first session, where we had some issues. The second session was business as usual and we eventually got to a reasonable car, which we can work on tonight with the engineers and try to find some tenths for tomorrow. When it started raining, we went out in the wet conditions to check how the car would behave in case there’s more rain over the weekend. We didn’t expect it to rain that much, so I quickly came back into the pits to bring the car home safely.

“We need a good qualifying, a good start and a good strategy to make everything perfect if we want to take points, and we need to be focussed and concentrated. It’s going to be difficult, but maybe the weather will help us – mixed conditions would be ideal.”

STOFFEL VANDOORNE

“The feeling in the car was quite positive today, the handling felt quite good. From my position, this weekend we know we are starting last, so we had a bit of a different run programme today compared to a usual Friday, concentrating more on high-fuel runs to set up the car for the race. That’s where our main focus is for this weekend, and hopefully with a bit of changeable weather we can still have a good result.

“The penalty doesn’t affect my motivation at all. It’s a shame that it’s happened in Spa, but it’s the way it is. The penalties were inevitable considering the issues we’ve had at the beginning of the season, so it was always going to be like this. We need to think about the future, and hopefully it will help us at other grands prix.

“I feel confident about the rest of the season. As usual, there are circuits that will suit us better and circuits that will not suit us as much – but when the chance is there to grab some points, we need to take advantage of that.”

ERIC BOULLIER

“Today was a relatively productive day despite the stoppage for rain, and we were able to conduct a number of useful evaluations on the chassis side with aero and handling. Spa is a tough circuit on the cars, and we want to make sure we’re as prepared as possible for the weekend ahead.

“I’m pleased that we managed to run reliably in both sessions - it’s given us useful information to take forward into tomorrow’s all-important qualifying session. We know that Stoffel will unfortunately be starting at the back, but for Fernando a good grid slot will be key to a solid result on Sunday. For Stoffel, we’re focusing on giving him the best race car we can for his home grand prix, and he put a solid performance today in front of his home crowd.

“As we can see, the weather is typically unpredictable here at Spa, and conditions can change rapidly. We’re working hard to optimise our set-up for all eventualities, and a bit of rain on Saturday could really spice things up for qualifying. And that means on Sunday, anything could happen.”

YUSUKE HASEGAWA

“Today we used the updated PU for both drivers in FP1 and FP2. I’m satisfied that we were able to confirm the effectiveness of the updates we brought here, without any major issues. I think it was a positive day overall. I’m also happy that both drivers finished close to the top ten, even though we expect a tough weekend at this power-hungry circuit.

“It’s a shame that Stoffel has to start with grid penalties at his first home race in Formula 1. However, we decided as a team to change his PU in order to introduce the updates as early as possible. In spite of the situation, he showed solid running in front of his home crowd today. Fernando improved his position in the afternoon session and I think both drivers are in good shape going into Saturday’s qualifying.

“With the famous Spa weather, the weekend may still be tricky. That said, I think we have a chance for both drivers to get some points from the race.”

Ferrari

It was a day of mixed feelings for Scuderia Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. However, at the end of the two Friday practice sessions the two men managed to post competitive times on the 7.004 Km Ardennes track,both on timed laps or during long-runs.

Kimi reported no major surprises: “Today we somehow expected how practice was going to be and it was not too bad as a start. Obviously there are always things you want to try more and the rain in the end did not help, but it was a pretty normal Friday. It’s hard to compare driving here to a year ago, but it doesn’t feel very different, as we are now quite used to going a bit faster everywhere. We’ll keep working today, this evening and tomorrow morning, in order to be stronger for qualifying. There are things we have to go through to do better, as is the case with any Friday at any race circuit. There’s no point now to start guessing what the others are doing, we’ll see tomorrow in qualifying, but I’m sure we can be fast”.

Seb, on the other hand, felt that improvement is at hand in terms of performance: “I am not entirely happy but overall I think the car is ok. We just need to put a little bit more together. This is a nice track and the cars have more grip, so it is more fun. It should be nice tomorrow even if I don’t know what the weather will be like. This is a long track, so it is not that easy to put everything together. I didn’t really find the rhythm today but the long run was better. So, overall the car is capable of being fast, but we need to get it right. I need to do my job and I know I can go faster. On Friday it is always difficult to judge the situation, because on Saturday it seems that everyone makes a step forward. If we can do that, then we can be very close. We are here to give a hard time to our competitors”.

Sauber

It was an eventful Friday for the Sauber F1 Team during the free practice sessions ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix. The team focused on aerodynamic and mechanical tests during both sessions. In FP1, Marcus Ericsson tested the Halo system during his installation lap. Due to heavy rainfall towards the end of FP2, the planned programme could not be completed.

Marcus Ericsson

“Today’s sessions went quite ok for me. We were able to work through our programme and evaluate the car by testing different setups. In FP2, we continued to work through the planned programme and gathered lots of data. However, the rain came down quite hard towards the end which prevented us from completing long-runs. We will analyse our data now and work on improving our performance for tomorrow.”

Pascal Wehrlein

“Today was not the best day for me, as I had technical difficulties in the morning, followed by rain which had an influence on our FP2 programme. My team of mechanics worked hard in FP1 and managed to fix the issues we were having and get me back on the track. Due to the circumstances, however, I was unable to complete as many laps as I would have liked today. I am positive that after we sit down and look into our data we can improve our performance for the rest of the weekend.”