FP1 & FP2 Australian GP report: Toro Rosso

Jean-Eric Vergne

“It was a really good day today without any problems in either session. Considering how hard the winter testing was for us, I am really pleased about how we have started this weekend. Everyone in the team worked very hard in the past weeks and we never lost our focus. The result is that we have made real progress since the last Bahrain test. But it’s only Friday, so we need to work hard tonight, looking at all the data that we managed to collect today.”

Daniil Kvyat

“This was for sure a solid start to my first Grand Prix weekend. We didn’t focus too much on performance but we managed to get quite a lot of laps done, which was really important. I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the tyres, especially from the Soft. But we collected a lot of information and we definitely have a better overall picture. There’s plenty to discuss with the engineers tonight. Hopefully we can put it all together and be strong for the remainder of the weekend.”

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer)

“We made a decent start to the race weekend and actually achieved a lot of the mileage in the programme that we wanted to do and that’s really positive. Both drivers have gone through all the procedures, they both did short and long runs and also pit stops. We clearly made some progress, which is very encouraging. There’s obviously more work ahead of us. We’ve done some long runs, but we need to do some more work there. The car seems to be working okay, so now it’s a case of understanding and playing with the setup. As for our new driver Daniil, he has done a good job. In fact, it’s all new for us too, which means we are not where we want to be in terms of set-up. So considering all this we are happy with his work today and we are sure that he will learn very quickly and close the gap to Jev.”

Ricardo Penteado (Renault Sport F1 track support leader)

“We had two very productive sessions and it was good to be able to complete a lot of running round this track. The driver feedback has been positive and we have made some good progress with the ERS systems. We can still improve the drivability in the slow corners, but we will improve tomorrow based on the information we got today from the high mileage. We need to check some of the settings on the longer runs, but overall it’s been a very positive day with the new Power Units.”