FP1 & FP2 - Abu Dhabi GP team quotes

Ferrari

This Friday at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was a busy one for the Scuderia Ferrari team and its drivers. Over the two free practice sessions which took place in the afternoon and evening, Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel worked solidly on preparing for qualifying and the race, both of them making a mistake each, although it did not have a significant effect on the day’s programme.

FP1. Sebastian and Charles ended the first session in fifth and seventh places respectively. They began on the soft tyres before switching to the medium to evaluate its potential behaviour in the first stint of the race. Vettel posted a 1’38”906 and Charles did a 1’39”249. When there was just a minute remaining, the German spun his car into the barriers at turn 19 which slightly damaged his SF90.

FP2. Before the second session, which started in daylight and ended under the floodlights that turn night into day at the Yas Marina circuit, the gearbox was changed on Sebastian’s car, but this was penalty-free as the one taken off was not his race gearbox. The green light came on at 17 (14 CET), exactly the same time at which qualifying starts tomorrow. It was a busy 90 minutes. Both drivers began with qualifying runs and the Monegasque was immediately in trouble, when, at the same turn 19, he brushed the barriers with both right hand wheels. A check revealed no damage was done and so he was able to go back out, with nothing more than a tyre change. Leclerc was quickest of the two Scuderia drivers, posting a 1’36”642, slightly better than Vettel’s 1’36”691.

Long run. In the second part of the session, the focus shifted to long run work for the race. Sebastian tackled his on medium tyres and Charles had the hardest ones.

Programme. The final hour of free practice takes place tomorrow at 14 local time (11 CET). Sunday’s 21st and final race of the year gets underway at 17.10 (14.10 CET).

Charles Leclerc

“The first session was quite challenging for us. The balance of the car was not great, but we took a very good step forward and returned to FP2 with a better performance. This is positive, as the track conditions were far more representative of what we can expect during qualifying and the race, considering that they both take place during the night in Abu Dhabi.

Tyre degradation is quite an important factor here. We seem to be fast in the first and second sectors, however still have some work ahead in optimising how we perform in sector three, so we will focus on that and try to make some further improvements.

Our competitors may very well be stronger than what they have shown in FP2, so we will see how things stand tomorrow.”

Sebastian Vettel

“In the medium low speed corners of this circuit we are still lacking speed, compared to our rivals.

Sector three is the one that really hurts us, we are struggling with the tyres getting hot, and the car is difficult to drive. Of course when you drive on the limit, any car will be more difficult to drive, and this what we are here to do. We will try our best to have a solid weekend, we can improve the set up and then see if we can fight well on Sunday.

Today I hit the barriers: I was caught out a bit by surprise as I didn’t expect to spin. I knew going in that I would have to catch the rear, but it didn’t quite work, which was a bit unfortunate, but the only damage was to the rim.”

Mercedes

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport top the time-sheets on Friday at Yas Marina Circuit

— Valtteri set the fastest time in FP1 with Lewis in P3
— In the evening session, Valtteri was again the fastest man on track with Lewis in P2

Valtteri Bottas

It’s been a good day out on track; the car was well-balanced from the get-go. I had to take a fresh engine for the weekend which also seems be to working well. My pace looked competitive in both sessions, so from that perspective we’ve definitely started the last race weekend of the season off on the right foot, although I’m sure there’s still room for improvement for tomorrow. The track was a bit dusty on the first few runs in FP1, but it evolved quickly and then felt pretty good all through the session. The end of my FP2 session was compromised by a minor incident with Grosjean; I thought he had seen me going for the overtake on the inside, but by the time I realised that he hadn’t seen me, there was no way for me to escape anymore.

Lewis Hamilton

It’s been a bit of an usual Friday for me; I was struggling to get into the rhythm today, but you have your good and bad days. Nonetheless, the car still felt good, but there’s definitely areas that we can work on as a team and areas for me to work on personally. I’ll just sit down tonight and make sure to get that straight for tomorrow. I’ve been trying to explore some new avenues with the car. We already know where it works well, so I’m pushing the car into different places, just trying to see if there’s anywhere else I can exploit the car and the tyres for the future.

James Allison

It’s been a pretty good day, Valtteri was strong from the outset in FP1 and kept that good pace going in FP2 on the low fuel and also in the race simulation runs. Lewis took a little bit longer to find his rhythm with the car but seems to have got that now and was certainly fast and very effective in the long runs. The car is behaving itself and we’re hopefully of a good day tomorrow. Although we’ve had a strong day today, it’s pretty clear from looking at the Ferrari and the Red Bull that they’ve got pace in their car as well, so it’ll be an exciting day tomorrow in Qualifying where there’ll be no room for error.

Alfa Romeo

Track conditions at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix are a mighty variable – one of the biggest drivers and engineers must contend with. Daytime in the Emirates is hot, even in November, but as soon as the sun sets, temperatures drop. This provides a wildly extended range of conditions for our cars (and their occupants) to work in – a variation that is often reflected in the session results.

Such was the difference today between FP1 and FP2. A strong display in the earlier session gives us plenty of promise for the rest of the weekend; but with qualifying and Sunday’s race to be contested in the cooler circumstances of early evening, it will be crucial to harness the C38’s performance also when the floodlights turn on.

One final qualifying awaits us in 2019: our engineers are crunching the data already to make the best of tomorrow’s battle for the grid. Once again, every detail will matter – in the light of day and in the darkness of night alike.

Kimi Räikkönen

“Laptimes say very little on Fridays so I won’t focus too much on that. We still have to work on things, look at all the data we collected and make an improvement ahead of tomorrow. Only when we get to qualifying we will have a clear idea of where we really stand against the rest.”

Antonio Giovinazzi

“We looked strong in FP1, but tomorrow’s qualifying conditions will look a lot more like FP2 when it was cooler. We will need to check everything we learnt today, come up with a good setup and put it all together when it matters. I made a small mistake when pushing, but didn’t touch the wall. In the end, you’re trying to find the limit and this is what practice is for. The track is quite long and the gaps are naturally bigger, but the battle in the midfield will still be close. We will need to analyse all the data we got tonight and make the right choices for tomorrow.”

Toro Rosso

Daniil Kvyat

“It was a productive day, FP1 wasn’t so important as the conditions are different to the conditions we race in, but it’s still useful to get some reference points and see how the car behaves. FP2 was also productive, all of the laps were important because the conditions are more representative for the race, so it was good to put so many laps in during the session. We’ll see when we study the data tonight what we need to do with the car for tomorrow. I felt quite good with the car today, but it doesn’t mean we can stop working and leave everything like this, things change over the weekend and we need to adapt.”

Pierre Gasly

“It was a bit of a messy FP1 between the red flags and getting blocked on my second run, so it wasn’t an ideal session as we didn’t do many laps. The good thing was we were still able to test a couple of things we had planned. FP2 was a better session, as between the two cars we completed more testing ahead of Qualifying and the race, so now we have good things to analyse to decide what’s the best configuration for tomorrow. I’m happy with this afternoon, the long-run pace was strong and I think there’s more to come in the short runs. To finish in the top ten today makes us feel positive.”

Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer)

“We didn’t have the easiest FP1 session today and this was reflected on the timing sheets. We ran the Option first followed by the Prime, which was never going to help flatter us, and we came here with a number of test items, which were unfortunately interrupted by the red flags. This means we were a little bit on the back foot during that session. Yas Marina is a track where it’s easy to get stuck in traffic, and this happened particularly to Pierre as he struggled to get a clean lap. For Dany, the car balance was quite good in FP1, while Pierre struggled a little bit more. We did a lot of analysis on the data and made a number of changes going into FP2, so we had a cleaner session this afternoon. We were able to show the true competitiveness of the car over the short runs with both cars ending the day in the top 10, which is where they should be, so that was positive. In the long runs, the Option tyre showed to be quite stable, but there is still some work to do, particularly if we make it to Q3 tomorrow as it would be the race start tyre. The performance on the other two compounds on the long runs looked pretty good, so there’s still a lot to analyse tonight, but I think we can look forward to a reasonable performance for the rest of the weekend.”

Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director)

“From a PU point of view, everything went smoothly today across both teams. In FP2 when conditions were similar to those we will experience in qualifying and the race, all four of our cars were in the top ten, which is a solid performance. However, we still have plenty of work to do to get our settings right for the rest of the weekend, to improve our performance. We will analyse our data carefully – mainly from FP2 – to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying.”

Red Bull

MAX VERSTAPPEN

“Overall, it was a pretty decent Friday. I’m not entirely happy with the balance yet and there are of course still some things we need to look at and do better but overall I’m pretty pleased. Mercedes look very strong here again and will be hard to beat but I still think it will be close tomorrow. We will analyse the tyre data later today but overall there are no real surprises. The soft is quick over one lap and on race runs it drops off as expected.”

ALEX ALBON

“It was tricky out there but overall today was good and we’re getting there. It’s difficult to get the tyres working and there’s quite a lot of dust down so that’s why we saw a lot of cars spinning. The balance was ok and we know we need to improve a little bit here and there but Max looked quick so let’s see how things go tomorrow. I think I’ve got a little bit of fine tuning to do on my side, especially in sector three, but we’re chipping away. The Ferraris will of course be quick in qualifying but let’s see where we are come qualifying.”

Renault F1

Renault F1 Team started the final Grand Prix weekend of the 2019 FIA Formula 1 World Championship with a mixed day of practice at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit.

Nico Hülkenberg enjoyed a smooth first session, recording the tenth fastest time. Daniel Ricciardo suffered an engine failure, which caused his session to end early.

In Free Practice 2, Nico was fifteenth with Daniel just 0.278secs adrift of Nico in sixteenth.

Alan Permane Technical programme notes

• Nico was relatively happy with the car during FP1 where he ran Pirelli’s Medium (yellow, C4) tyre.
• Daniel’s session ended 30 minutes early after an engine failure at the penultimate corner bringing out a red flag. The team replaced the engine, which was a high-mileage unit from the start of the season. We brought forward the ICE that was scheduled to be used on Saturday and Sunday.
• FP2 is important here as it’s when conditions are most representative for what we’re expecting for qualifying and race.
• Nico began on Hard tyres (white, C3) with Daniel on Mediums. After that, both cars ran the Soft (red, C5) tyre for the first time of the day, before focusing on high fuel runs.

Nico Hülkenberg

“It was a fairly standard Friday. The first session was hot under the sun and then things cooled in the evening where conditions are similar to both qualifying and the race. There were no particular problems for us and we worked through our programme as planned. The car felt good in the first session but we seemed to lose a bit of performance in the evening. We need to see what happened there. We’ll dig into the data and aim to make some improvements ready for qualifying.”

Daniel Ricciardo

“It wasn’t the smoothest Friday for us today. We missed a bit of running with the engine issue in the first session and, in the evening, we made some changes to the car. We were a bit off the pace, we haven’t quite found the balance yet, so we’ll be looking for some further tweaks ahead of qualifying. I’m feeling confident we’ll get there and find the sweet spot to put us in a pretty good place for tomorrow and for the race.”

Alan Permane, Sporting Director

“Today proved to be a tricky day for us. FP1 went well enough but in the cooler conditions of FP2 we didn’t quite get the tyres into their working window for the first timed laps early in the session. As always we seem competitive on high fuel and we will be looking at various settings overnight to have the car in the right configuration to make some headway in final practice and qualifying tomorrow.”

Williams

Dave Robson, Senior Race Engineer

We enjoyed a productive Friday as we conducted testing in the hot conditions of FP1 before turning our attention to qualifying and race preparation in FP2. The red flags in both sessions disrupted the flow a little, but, nonetheless, we adapted well and completed everything that we had planned.

The cooler conditions in FP2, and the relatively soft compounds available at this event, helped improve the handling of the car, and this was particularly to George’s liking. Unfortunately, Robert was less happy in FP2 than he had been in FP1, and this is something that we will be looking at overnight.

Tomorrow will be another day of two halves, with the track hot in FP3 before again cooling down before, and during qualifying. We will not pay too much attention to FP3 and instead will try to build on our FP2 findings as we seek the best balance for qualifying.

Although we are rapidly approaching the end of a long and tricky season, it is inspiring to see that the team continues to work hard, professionally, and effectively. Their tireless efforts are very much appreciated, and their dedication to the cause will prove to be excellent preparation for next season.

George Russell

The car was feeling nice to drive, probably one of the best of the year, but the pace was quite slow. It was tricky around the circuit, because it changes a lot from FP1 to FP2 as the conditions get cooler and it turns from day to night. I was enjoying it and it was good fun to drive. I felt that I learnt something from FP2 in the long runs, especially after the red flag as our pace was stronger in relative terms. I have not been feeling great, but the session was good for me and I feel fine to drive, which is the most important thing.

Robert Kubica

Today was quite a mixture. The first session was surprisingly good for the conditions we had on the track. I was pretty happy with the balance and with the things we were trying, which were more for next year. Normally FP2 is a better session in the cooler conditions and with lower track temperatures, but for us it was the opposite. We need to try and get back to having the behaviour and feeling of the car I had in FP1, so, as always, we will try our best, and hopefully it will work better tomorrow than it did this afternoon.

Racing Point

LANCE STROLL

"The car looks pretty competitive, but obviously we don’t know what set-up and fuel loads the rest of the teams are running today so we will see what tomorrow brings. There are some things to look over tonight, but our pace in the second session gives us confidence for the rest of the weekend. We have a good balance here so it’s about optimising our package tomorrow. Every weekend is important but we definitely want to finish off the season on a high."

SERGIO PEREZ

"It has been a good day and our pace in FP2 was competitive. The evening session is generally the most representative so I’m feeling quite optimistic. Tomorrow is looking very tight and I think one or two tenths will make the difference between making Q3 and missing out. If we are able to put everything together and find a bit of rhythm and pace tomorrow, we can secure a good result in qualifying. Our race pace is also looking competitive so hopefully we can carry this forward into Sunday."

OTMAR SZAFNAUER, CEO & TEAM PRINCIPAL

"It’s going to be another close and competitive weekend with small margins making the difference in the midfield. We’ve collected plenty of data today, although the three red flags prevented us from doing as much running as we would have liked. That said, we have a good understanding of the three tyre compounds and by the end of the day we had given the drivers a car balance more to their liking. The homework we’ve done should give us a good chance to compete for a place in Q3 tomorrow evening."

McLaren

Carlos Sainz

“A decent Friday in terms of running but obviously just a bit outside the top 10, which is not ideal. The field seems to have tightened even more this weekend and the battle to lead the midfield tomorrow will be tough. I’m confident we know where to look for those extra tenths and hopefully we can take the necessary steps to qualify close to the top teams.”

Lando Norris

“A difficult day. We’re not where we want to be in terms of the pace of the car. We do have positives concerning the car but also some weaknesses. We just need to work on those then I think we should be looking better for tomorrow. Qualifying is going to be very close as usual, no matter what. We just need to make sure we extract every little bit."

Andrea Stella - Performance Director

“We had a solid Friday with both cars running well, getting through their run plans without any issues. Today’s test items included some aerodynamic measurements and tests, in addition to gaining an understanding of the tyres in preparation for the race.

“This weekend the tyres are interesting, as is usually the case when we have the C5 compound. We’ve gathered good data today that we’ll analyse overnight to give us the best chance of ending the season on a high note in what promises to be a very tight qualifying session and Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.”

Haas F1

The final round of the 2019 FIA Formula One World Championship began with practice Friday at Yas Marina Circuit as teams prepared for Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Two 90-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 5.554-kilometer (3.451-mile), 21-turn track ran under clear conditions.

Both Haas F1 drivers started their Friday programs with an installation lap and timed stint utilizing the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires before switching to the Red soft compound for two additional runs. Grosjean’s best lap on the softs was a 1:39.146 which was good for sixth overall. Magnussen was eighth on the timesheet, also on the soft rubber, courtesy of a quick lap of 1:39.350. Two red flag stops marred the opening session – both involving cars stranded on track, the first being Daniel Ricciardo’s expired Renault, the second Sebastian Vettel’s Scuderia Ferrari in the barrier at Turn 19.

Lap times dropped under the floodlights as day turned to night in FP2. Contact from Valtteri Bottas ended Grosjean’s evening early at Turn 11 as the subsequent damage to his VF-19’s floor was too extensive to continue. The incident with the Mercedes driver occurred just seven laps into Grosjean’s planned long-distance run, the Frenchman having earlier set a lap time of 1:37.601 on soft rubber for seventh quickest. Magnussen ended the session 14th overall, the Dane banking a lap of 1:38.080 on softs, before completing his run plan with a high-fuel, long-distance stint.

Between the two sessions, Haas F1 Team ran a total of 85 laps – 50 by Magnussen and 35 by Grosjean.

Romain Grosjean

“I was running a modified package, one that I hadn’t run before, so we were really doing it to get my feedback and to learn for the future. In FP1 I was really happy with the floor, the modifications and so on, so I said let’s carry on with it into the second session. Unfortunately, we only had one of that package. Tomorrow we have to change the car back. It’s not great as we did a really good job today with sixth in FP1 and seventh in FP2, best of the rest in both sessions. Yes, race pace can be improved, but we tried a few different things and we know where we could have done better. Now tomorrow we need to revert to another package. Valtteri (Bottas) apologized, he made a mistake, he even offered me one of his floors, but we have to stick with what we know!”

Kevin Magnussen

“It’s slightly difficult to say how it’s been today, it’s been a little bit difficult to read. FP1 was okay, then in FP2 I had a lot of traffic. I was just really unlucky with it. So that’s made it hard to get a real feeling on things. Even on my long run I kept getting traffic, it wasn’t really a good session. As I said, FP1 was okay. We saw Romain (Grosjean) up there at the top of the midfield in FP2, so it can’t be too bad. He obviously had damage with Bottas crashing into him, he has to go to another floor – the same one as me. I’m hoping that wasn’t the reason he was so fast, we’ll see.”

Günther Steiner

“It looked like in FP1 that we were going to have a good day, and also FP2 started well. We got our testing in, we’re doing some development work looking ahead to 2020. Unfortunately, it came to an end when Bottas decided to take us out. What looked like a good day to start off with, it came to an end just over an hour into FP2, so it didn’t end as a good day. We have to regroup and see how we run the car tomorrow, we’ll try to do our best as always. We didn’t expect to be performing as well as we did today, but we did, and now we just need to try and continue it and get the same kind of performance out on Saturday.”