FP1 & FP2 - Russian GP report: Toro Rosso Renault

Max Verstappen

"It was not a very eventful day, as we didn’t get a lot of track time unfortunately. This morning in FP1 we were not able to do a proper run because of the diesel on the track in Sector 2, which remained quite wet. This wasn’t great for us, because we didn’t learn as much as we wanted to. Then just before FP2 it started to rain heavily, so there was a lot of waiting as the track was very wet. But in the end we did some wet running and it was very positive. I think we can be happy with our afternoon!"

Carlos Sainz

"It hasn’t been a very productive Friday as we didn’t complete many laps – this morning’s delay because of the diesel spill and this afternoon’s rain didn’t help. It’s not the ideal situation, especially if you are a rookie arriving at a new track, but we had a bit of a similar situation in Japan and we still had a good weekend. Today it was so slippery out there! I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s FP3, hopefully it will be dry and we can achieve all the information we need in a short amount of time and get ready for qualifying."

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer)

"It’s obviously a bit of a shame that because of this morning’s diesel spill on track and this afternoon’s rain we’ve not got as many laps in as we would’ve ideally wanted, but nonetheless our two young drivers settled in well to another track that is new to them. They both had one decent 12-lap run in the dry in the morning and were quite happy with the car. It was a bit tricky to get a measure of the perfect dry grip level because of the difficult track conditions at the time, so it leaves quite a few question marks for a dry Saturday and Sunday. On the engineering side, we had some new parts on both cars – some are more under the skin than obvious aero parts – but they all seem to work well today, which is a real positive. In this afternoon’s FP2 we limited ourselves to one run on a set of extreme tyres in case it rains on Sunday and we need that set of tyres. Current forecasts predict a dry race day but there is some more rain lurking on Monday. In the wet conditions both drivers did fine and seem quite comfortable in the car."