Friday Team Quotes

McLaren Formula 1 Team

Oscar Piastri (1st, 1:15.293): “A decent day. I think there are a few bits to tidy up overnight, but that’s usual. It’s close at the front, so we’ve got a bit more to find. I’m looking forward to Qualifying tomorrow.”

Lando Norris (2nd, 1:15.318): “A good day to get started in Imola. It’s a difficult track but a fun and fast one to drive, so overall a nice Friday. We’ve identified a few things to work on overnight as a team in preparation for getting back out on track tomorrow - I'm looking forward to it.”

Andrea Stella, Team Principal: “It’s good to be back in Imola, it’s such an iconic, fast, flowing and challenging circuit for the drivers and the teams. It’s been a relatively smooth and productive day of practice. We have learned a lot about the car setup and the tyre behaviour. The car seems to be competitive, but the field is particularly tight, including some of the midfield teams that look to not be too far away. So, we’ll have to make sure we maximise every little detail in terms of car setup and driving. We look forward to the remainder of the weekend.”

Scuderia Ferrari HP

Charles Leclerc (6th, 1:15.768): "FP1 was a bit tricky and we faced different challenges during the session. In FP2, we put it together more, but we are still lacking overall performance. Our race pace looked decent, however, this is a track where overtaking is quite difficult. Our weak point at the moment is our qualifying pace, so this is our priority to work on ahead of tomorrow."

Lewis Hamilton (11th, 1:15.943): "FP1 felt positive — the balance was good and there wasn’t much we needed to change heading into FP2, but the second session was more challenging and it was hard to find consistency. We’ll look into the data we’ve collected this evening, but we completed the programme and the long runs, so there’s solid amount of information to analyse."

Oracle Red Bull Racing

Max Verstappen (5th, 1:15.735): “We tried a lot of things today. Some things worked a bit better than others but, ultimately, we weren’t fast enough today. Qualifying will be important here and, at the moment, we aren’t quite where we want to be. We need to do a bit more work to have a better balance in the car and go faster. It is the same in the long runs, I got overtaken by the McLarens and we weren’t really where we wanted to be compared to other Teams. Overall, it was a bit tough today."

Yuki Tsunoda (8th, 1:15.827): “Overall it was a positive day of practice. We know our limitations and it was good to do our first long run today with the new upgrade package, but we need to nail it tomorrow. We still have lots of work to do as a Team and we will look to put it all together tomorrow. The gap at the top to McLaren still exists, but we’ll focus our side to keep improving and what we need to do to make a step for Qualifying."

Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team

George Russell (4th, 1:15.693): "It feels great to be back driving at Imola. This track is one of my favourites and it is definitely one of those circuits that we all love coming to. It has a good mixture of low, medium, and high-speed corners, and it is quite narrow in places. There isn't a huge amount of run off either, so you need to be at your absolute best to extract a really good lap time. The field was really tight today in both sessions, with a few unexpected teams performing really well. As expected, the McLarens were out front setting the benchmark today. It is likely that they will be the favourites to set the pace tomorrow in Qualifying; our aim is to hopefully get amongst them. We'll keep working hard tonight to identify areas that we can improve in. If we are able to do so, then we can hopefully reduce the gap to the very front and have an enjoyable Saturday."

Andrea Kimi Antonelli (18th, 1:16.406): "I struggled to put everything together on my single laps today. There were some mistakes on my side and the low grip conditions did not make it ideal to get the C6 compound performing. On the other side, I felt good on the long runs with the car providing a good overall balance. After these two sessions, I know what we need to work on and what I need to do to perform at my best in tomorrow's Qualifying and Sunday's race. It is obviously a really special race for me. During that first lap in FP1, it felt amazing to see all these fans in the grandstand and along the track. It gives so much energy, and when I put my visor down, I am ready to get the job done. Thank you to everyone who was trackside today cheering the team on; I'm looking forward to seeing that support over the rest of the weekend."

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: "We've brought our first significant aero updates this weekend and they seem to be working as anticipated. That is encouraging and gives us a solid platform on which we can build the rest of our weekend. It is also our first time with the C6 Pirelli compound this season and that's led to a slightly unusual programme. Like most of the cars on the grid, we ran two sets of the Soft compound in FP1, focusing on single lap performance. George's pace was where we were expecting, consistent with his past performance on a Friday. Kimi still has a bit of work to do overnight on his single lap pace, but the overall picture looks promising. Kimi has been efficient this season in analysing the data overnight and we are sure that tomorrow will be more positive. His long run was strong which bodes well for Sunday even though the C6 compound looks challenging, being softer than what we used last year. The field is tight, and we'll do our overnight work to see what pace we can bring to final practice. When it is as competitive as we have seen today, every hundredth can make the difference."

Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team

Fernando Alonso (14th, 1:16.220): "Today was all about understanding our new package as Lance had the new updates fitted. I tried to be consistent and give feedback on the previous spec car, so we will look tonight and try to figure out what the best parts are going forward. Traffic management is very tricky around this circuit and hopefully we can get it right tomorrow in Qualifying."

Lance Stroll (17th, 1:16.341): "We brought some new parts here so today was about learning what we could. We now need to look at the data from today and see what we can do overnight to improve the car setup and we go again tomorrow."

BWT Alpine F1 Team

Pierre Gasly (3rd, 1:15.569): “It has been a good Friday for us right since the start of the day. From the first lap I could tell the car felt good and we have answered some question marks from the last race so that is certainly positive. The car reacts how I want and I am just trying to find the limits now and refine a few things but the potential is certainly there. We had a little incident at the end of Free Practice 1, which was completely unavoidable. A hare jumped across the track before Turn 14 and unfortunately smacked my front wing. It was one of those things, nothing I could do, and we had some damage to the car as a result of the impact. The team did a great job to repair things and minimise any disruption ahead of Free Practice 2. On track, as ever, it is very close. We just need to keep this momentum, try to find more pace, and aim to be in the mix for the top 10 in Qualifying. I am excited and ready for the rest of the weekend here in Imola.”

Franco Colapinto (13th, 1:16.044): “It is great to be back in a Formula One car on a race weekend again. I’m beginning to be in a happier place with the car after my first day. There’s still a lot of work to do with the setup but I’m starting to be more comfortable. I have got a lot still to learn and to get used to, but I am building up to it and by the end of the day I was starting to be a bit more competitive. The car is looking quite strong, especially with Pierre so I’m sure we are in the mix. Qualifying is going to be tricky with the traffic, we’re going to need to be on it from the start of Q1. It’s important for us to be on top of everything so we will check all of the data from today and aim to find good answers and be stronger tomorrow. Overall, I’ve been pleased with my first day and I’m looking forward to Qualifying.”

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team

Oliver Bearman (12th, 1:16.009): “Overall, I think it’s been a positive day. We brought a new update to this track and FP1 was really about finding out how that correlated on the actual circuit and how that matched up to findings from simulations. We were able to extract a bit more from the car this afternoon, and honestly, I’ve been pretty happy so far. My feeling was good today, I had good confidence in the areas that we’ve appeared to improve so we’ll see how it goes tomorrow; it’s a very tight field. We’re still playing the trade-off between top speed and downforce level, and I think it’s going to be the topic of tonight with the wind changing tomorrow. I’m not sure how we’re going to fare, but I felt confident and that’s normally a good indicator.”

Esteban Ocon (20th, 1:16.420): “It was a tough Friday, there’s a lot we need to figure out. Today we struggled a lot with the front end of the car. We spotted a few things, so we need to go over the data tonight but clearly there’s something not quite right, so we need to get on top of that tomorrow. The new C6 compound held together over a lap – nobody has really used it for a long run yet – so we’ll be learning a lot during the race, but there were no issues. Tonight, we’ll dig in as a team and come back tomorrow.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: “It was the first day of running in Imola with the upgrade package, and although we’ve still got to understand a lot more, I think it’s been a positive day. Especially on Ollie’s side, he’s happy with how the car is feeling, so we’ll look at the data tonight to fine-tune things. On Esteban’s car, in terms of balance, he’s less happy compared to Ollie but there’s no reason why we couldn’t get the desired car balance for Esteban, so we have more work to do tonight. Today’s execution was clean, we learned quite a lot, so our focus tomorrow is potentially getting into Q3, I don’t think it’s out of reach.”

Visa Cash App Racing Bulls F1 Team

Isack Hadjar (7th, 1:15.792): “Overall, it was a good day, and I’m happy with my feelings in the car. We brought an update here in Imola, but it’s not a big one, so it didn’t feel like a brand-new car. I didn’t really have to adapt to any changes, as the characteristics of the car are the same. Looking at this afternoon, I’d say it was just an unfortunate end to the session for us. I lost the car out of Turn 3, but I was able to save it straight away, however I already had two wheels in the grass, so I lost it again. It was a shame as I couldn’t complete the run. I’m sure Qualifying is going to be close tomorrow. It’s a small track and one of those everyone knows pretty well, so I definitely expect a competitive day ahead of us. It’s quite difficult to overtake here, so it will be important to make the most out of it.”

Liam Lawson (15th, 1:16.255): “We are pushing for Q3 but it’s hard to tell what our performance will be at the moment, everyone is still improving and obviously we made a big step on the other side of the garage, so hopefully we can do the same tomorrow and even take that a step further. FP1 wasn’t too bad. We knew we had some work to do, so we tried some stuff in FP2 and both went in different directions to get a good idea of the car and we definitely did that, which is positive. Tomorrow, we will look to apply this. We are pushing for Q3 but it’s hard to tell what our performance will be at the moment, everyone is still improving and obviously we made a big step on the other side of the garage, so hopefully we can do the same tomorrow and even take that a step further. The softs have been okay, nothing to really complain about at the moment. Tomorrow is the more important day but so far its been smooth."

Alan Permane, Racing Director: “An interesting day today, more so than normal for a Friday and that's largely due to the new C6 tyre we have available here, which has given everyone more to think about. It was a decent day, even if we’ve struggled a little bit with the car in the first session. We made changes to both cars across the sessions and the change on Isack’s car looks like it has settled things down and made him more comfortable. We will certainly be looking closely at both the changes we made, trying to take the best of them and applying them to both the cars for tomorrow.”

Williams Racing

Alexander Albon (9th, 1:15.916): "Not bad! The track feels awesome to drive, it’s always fun to come to Imola. That being said, we’re struggling a little bit with the softer compound of tyres. The C6 is new this year and it takes a little bit of learning. Congestion on the track isn’t great either but honestly, the car’s feeling pretty sensible around here. So far, so good!"

Carlos Sainz (10th, 1:15.934): "Good Friday here in Imola. In FP1 on Soft tyres we were quick, but in FP2 we need to understand why we didn’t extract the maximum out of that tyre. On Mediums however, the balance felt very good, so we need to work to understand the C6 and get ready for Qualifying. Track position is important here in Imola, so we need to find a bit of pace if we want to be in the mix."

Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber

Gabriel Bortoleto (16th, 1:16.339): “The day started off well. I was feeling comfortable in the car, pushing to find the limit and maintaining a strong pace over the long run. Unfortunately, I had a small snap — and as we said before the weekend, this track doesn’t leave much room for mistakes. I tried to correct it and did manage to do so, but unfortunately it was just a bit too late. Luckily, the car went in straight, so the damage was minor and we were able to fix it after the session — I would like to say thank you to all the mechanics for promptly sorting it out. FP2 ran smoothly, everything felt good again, and we were able to pick up right where we left off and continue gathering valuable data for tomorrow.”

Nico Hulkenberg (19th, 1:16.419): “It’s been a solid Friday for me: we ran through our planned program without any issues. The car’s balance feels reasonably good, but there’s still room to improve in terms of overall pace. We’ll be going through today’s data to see where we can fine-tune the set-up, which is especially important on a compact and technical circuit like Imola. With the performance gap between teams so tight, even small adjustments can have a big impact in qualifying.”