FP1 & FP2 - Russian GP report: Manor Mercedes

A frustrating first day of Russian Grand Prix preparation for Manor Racing. Rio recovered from a disrupted morning to really get to grips with a circuit he almost won at in GP2 last season. Pascal is looking forward to seeing how the track evolves after his first outing at the Sochi Autodrom.

Pascal Wehrlein

“It was a difficult day today. The track was very slippery and so we struggled with a really low grip level. As more and more rubber goes down the conditions will keep improving so we remain positive for the rest of the weekend. We’ll have a good look at the data tonight and see what we have to do to prepare for a better day tomorrow.”

Rio Haryanto

“During the first session, we had a problem with the steering rack, so we lost about an hour of track time, but it was good that we still made it out before the end of the session. The mechanics did a very good job. Overall we’ve completed some good low and high fuel runs, so we collected a lot of data and looking at the pace it was also pretty good, but we still need to improve to get closer to the other teams.”

Dave Ryan, Racing Director

“We’ve had our fair share of frustrations today. This morning we had to change the steering rack on Rio’s car, which cost him a lot of time in the garage, and around the same time we had to replace the floor on Pascal’s car, which was less than ideal. However, the crews did an exceptional job to recover the situation but even so we could have done without the interruption. By comparison, this afternoon was pretty straightforward in that both Rio and Pascal got through their respective programmes. This is good in that we have a lot of information about the tyres to go through this evening but at the same time we are very aware that we have quite a bit of work to do to improve our performance in time for qualifying tomorrow.”