FP1 & FP2 - US GP report: Toro Rosso Renault

Daniil Kvyat

“It was a quite standard Friday for us. We have to understand the characteristics of this circuit and we will work on finding the optimal settings as we always do between Friday and Saturday. Now we have some homework to do for tomorrow, which is usually something we manage to do quite well. So hopefully we’ll come out with something extra to improve our performance. As for the track, I enjoyed it a lot.”

Max Verstappen

“The main difference between here and Japan was how the tyres behaved. In Suzuka the fastest lap was the first and after it there was no way to improve, while here it took some time to get the lap in, but it’s good for me to see these differences and learn something more every time I’m in the car. Today I was also trying to understand the tyres better, lap after lap. I would say that the tyres aspect is the main point here. But the car in general was good, considering also Daniil’s performance. Anyway I am not here to set a lap time but just to get confident with the car and learn as much as possible for next year. I don’t need to find the limit now, there is time for that.”

Jean-Eric Vergne

"It was a good Friday. There is still something that we need to understand in order to get the tyres to work better, as this is the key point. The performance of the car on Prime tyres was not bad but we need to improve it on the Options. The long run looks good and even though I missed FP1 I think with a few adjustments from my side there is certainly a good margin of improvement for tomorrow. We will have to analyse all the data tonight but I think the car is there and I’m confident we can have a satisfying rest of the weekend.”

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer)

“Not a bad day for us today. Max had a decent FP1, with a solid performance on such a tricky track, where he adapted pretty well, doing a good job. With Daniil we did some tests with the rear wing level during FP2 and we have learnt something quite interesting there. As for Jev, obviously missing FP1, it takes us a certain amount of time to settle in during FP2, so I don’t think he is completely happy about the car balance yet, but he did a good job. We will have some work to do tonight to understand better the tyres’ behaviour, which is a little bit different from what we were expecting here, and improve our performance for tomorrow and Sunday’s race.”

Ricardo Penteado (Renault Sport F1 track support leader)

“All in all it’s been a very good day. Daniil again set the tone in the morning and we’re now hopeful of translating that into strong race pace. All three drivers achieved a good amount of mileage and we’ve had no problems with either car’s Power Unit. We just got on with the usual mapping and energy management work ahead of tomorrow and Sunday. Our simulations prior to coming here were pretty accurate and there were no big surprises, even though CoTA is reasonably tough on the PU.”