Scuderia Alpha Tauri’s Pierre Gasly had an absolutely fantastic start to his Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend on Friday as the Frenchman ended the opening session in fourth place while in the second practice he was third and speaking following the action he commented saying:
| “I really like driving this track, the corners are amazing and there’s a big rush of adrenalin when you’re out there. The whole day has been really good for us and I’m pretty happy with the pace so far. We know that on Saturday we usually do quite well, so I’m fairly confident for tomorrow, as I think we can still improve. I don’t feel quite as positive about the long runs though, so we still have some work to do to prepare for the race on Sunday.” |
Yuki Tsunoda ended the day in eighth place and speaking following the action he said:
“I’ve enjoyed today a lot as it’s a really fun track, especially the first sector, I’ve never driven a circuit with corners like this before, so it’s been pretty special. I think the pace today has been quite good. The hard tyre already works well here and then I think we need to adapt the car a bit to the other compounds, so we’ve got some work to do. Overall, I think we’re looking quite strong so far. I didn’t manage to complete any long runs yet, but today’s performance makes me positive.”
Chief Race Engineer with Scuderia Alpha Tauri, Jonathan Eddolls commented saying:
“As always, coming to a new track we have to spend some more time initially optimising the setup for the track characteristics and learning about the tyres. Predominately in FP1 the key was to work on the setup requirements to allow us to maximise the car’s potential for the rest of the weekend. The tyres look quite robust here, so we were able to take our learnings from the earlier session and modify our tyre allocation for FP2. The purpose of the second session was to continue our short runs, but also to start understanding the performance of the car on the longer runs, particularly after the challenges of last week. The track has developed a lot between the two sessions, meaning it was quite a struggle to stay on top of the balance of the car. We’ve gathered plenty of data today and for sure there is more lap time to find, so we’ll work hard tonight to get the car in the best place for Qualifying tomorrow.”
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