Haas, Williams and Renault’s reaction to their results from the second day of the second pre-season Formula 1 test.
Haas
Romain Grosjean:
“It was a good day in the car. We did most of the program we wanted to do. We’re still evaluating how the car is going and how we can improve the setup and find the weaknesses and strengths. Hopefully, before Melbourne we’ll have the time to make some small adjustments aerodynamically and mechanically to get there and be ready for a good performance. I’m very much looking forward to getting back in on Friday.”
Guenther Steiner:
“We got good laps in today, over 90. In the afternoon we had some handling problems, understeer mainly. We need to work on that to get it better. It seems like when it gets warmer it comes up. It’s just one of those things when you go testing you find these things and you find the solutions. We also had a small issue with the exhaust. Every small issue on these cars takes a long time to fix, so we lost 90 minutes in getting it fixed, but nothing particularly bad.”
.@RGrosjean logs 96 laps Wednesday. P10 on the screens with a best lap of 1:21.887. @KevinMagnussen back in the #VF17 Thursday. #HaasF1
— Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) 8 March 2017
Williams
Rod Nelson, Chief Test & Support Engineer:
Today was a pretty busy day again, and also included a driver change at lunchtime. Felipe was driving this morning and we tried the ultrasoft tyres for the first time, so we’ve got some good data to look at. Lance was back in the car in the afternoon and he did a good job. He’s never tried the supersoft tyres before but he acquitted himself really well considering the circuit conditions he had at the time. Overall we had a good clean day and completed 122 laps in total, which means we have a lot of useful data to look through tonight.
Felipe Massa:
It was a good morning. We completed all of our programmes and, like yesterday, I had a good feeling in the car. We’re happy with everything we tried in terms of set-up and trying different tyres. I’ve had a very good day and a half, but hopefully this is just the beginning and we can finish testing well. I’m very happy with what I’ve seen and what I feel in the car. It’s still difficult to know where we are compared to the others, but the car is definitely looking positive.
Lance Stroll:
I am quite happy with the afternoon and pleased with the morning watching Felipe do some solid running. I think it was a good day. As a team we got a lot of laps in, so we have a lot of positives to take out of today. I am not really focussed on laptimes, as it is testing and we are exploring a lot of different things on the car and trying to move forward.
I am just happy with getting some good running in, trying some stuff on the car and moving in the right direction. That is what we are focusing on over these few days, and so far so good. We did some short runs, and tried some different compounds. I went to the softer compounds today. I tried the supersofts but still have the ultrasoft remaining that I haven’t tried. It was good to get a feel for them for the first time.
That’s it for day two of the second test. 59 laps completed today by Lance, which takes the team’s total to 122 for the day! #Williams40 pic.twitter.com/UDEEK6JvrL
— WILLIAMS RACING (@WilliamsRacing) 8 March 2017
Renault
Nico Hülkenberg:
“We’ve made some positive changes to the car since yesterday and I had a solid and productive morning with 61 laps completed. I feel that the car has good promise and we’re making definite progress every time we go out. We know we have a solid baseline which we can work and build on to make a fast car. I’m looking forward to continue work on track tomorrow afternoon.”
Jolyon Palmer:
“It was a bit frustrating for me with quite a bit of time sat in the car whilst it was being checked over. Unfortunately, there was some work required before I was due to go out then there was some kind of really annoying pressure leak which would only show its face when I was about to take to the track. It’s one of those things that I’m sure the team will trace overnight, but it cost me track time today. The positive is that Nico had a good morning in the car so we know what is possible.”
Nick Chester, Chassis Technical Director:
“We had a promising morning with Nico completing a good number of set-up evaluations, predominantly using the soft and super soft tyres. He posted a strong tally of laps and we were happy with the pace he showed with the programme we were running. The start to Jolyon’s afternoon was delayed whilst we completed routine work on the clutch then, unfortunately, we encountered a persistent hydraulic pressure loss issue which meant our long-run programme was compromised. We’ve made another good step in understanding of the R.S.17 today and hope for more progress tomorrow.”
29 laps in the afternoon for @JolyonPalmer, with a side order of pit stop practice @Circuitcat_eng pic.twitter.com/m42jHe8Lwg
— Renault Sport F1 (@RenaultSportF1) 8 March 2017
