FP1 & FP2 - Austrian GP report: Toro Rosso Renault

Max Verstappen

“I think the day started off well. We had some new updates, so we used the first practice to test them and I was quite happy with the session. It was important to complete lots of laps in the morning and we then made the right choice for FP2. The lap times were not too bad on both the soft and supersoft tyres. It’s a shame that I got held up in the last sector on Options, if not I could’ve ended higher up, so I’m happy with today. I also like this track and driving here in an F1 car is even better!”

Carlos Sainz

“A challenging day today. The track is very slippery and there’s not much grip out there, but overall we did a positive job as a team. We split the programme for both cars in order to gather a lot of data in terms of downforce and right now it’s very difficult to judge what will be the best for tomorrow, as one thing works better in the race, another in qualifying… So there’s a lot of analysis to do tonight in order to choose the best option to go with. I have to say that it’s very nice to drive here, it’s an old-school very challenging track and that’s something I like!”

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer)

“A pretty good first day here in Austria. Both drivers settled in well and we were able to test some new parts on both cars, which worked positively. We also set the two cars up slightly differently today and there’s some interesting information for us to go through tonight. Probably the biggest thing for us to go away and work on now has to do with the amount of graining when on the Option tyre. We seem to be a lot happier on Primes, so we need to work on the set-up and make sure we find a way to work around this graining. But overall we can be satisfied with our Friday, we ticked all the boxes on the programme.”