Friday: An encouraging day at Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 12th

I think my experience in the World Series and other classes at this circuit helped me more than the winter testing I did here, when I only completed one run on slick tires in wet conditions. Nevertheless, I appreciated being on the first track of the season that I really know well, which made it easy to set some decent lap times. It was a straightforward session, and it was helpful to have an extra set of tires from Pirelli. We tried to adjust the mechanical balance of the car, which provided some improvements in certain areas, like braking, resulting in a small performance gain.

Sebastien Buemi – — and 13th

« A completely different experience from our winter testing here of course, with slower lap times due to the high temperatures, and we know the tires react very differently in these conditions. Even though it was only half a day for me, I was able to drive quite a bit, and I am quite satisfied, given that we have a lot of data to analyze, so it’s going to be a long evening. The main issue, which I think affected everyone, is that we have a lot of oversteer, and we saw a big difference between the soft and hard tires, probably the biggest we’ve seen all year. Tomorrow, I’ll have a pretty fresh engine, so I think we can move forward, and the rest of the weekend should be positive for us. »

Jaime Alguersuari – 18th and 15th

It’s a shame we lost time on track this morning. In the afternoon, I had a good feeling with the car, especially during the long runs, doing some pretty good lap times considering I was running on used hard tires. When I attempted to do a fast lap, I got caught in traffic, but overall, I am optimistic. Having two test sessions here this winter didn’t really help us as the car has evolved so much, and the track conditions are really different now.