Tyre problems were the reason for the results Ferrari achieved in Friday’s free practices for the Russian Grand prix. Sebastian Vettel was fastest in FP1 but gave fifth time in the afternoon. His teammate Kimi Raikkonen was sixth.
“Some Fridays are good, some aren’t and this one hasn’t been great for us. We are not where we want to be yet and we’ve got some catching-up to do. Today it was difficult to put the laps together, we went through the tyres too fast, especially the front left, and struggled a bit with both the fast laps and with fuel on board. There was also a lot of traffic and obviously this never helps”, Vettel said.
“Now we have some work to do, as we need to find the reasons for that and come back stronger. However, I am positive as ever, as I think that tomorrow and on Sunday it will be better and we’ll find out the right things to apply. We want to put both cars on the front row tomorrow; we don’t know yet what will happen, but we’ll try to do our best as pole is the best place to start from”.
Vettel: We went through the tyres too fast, especially the front left
Raikkonen added: “Usually, on Friday, it is always tricky with the tires; then the situation improves, the circuit cleans up and there’s more grip to be found. Today, the conditions we found were pretty much those we had expected. Normally, we don’t look too much into the lap times on Friday; we try many things and learn from it. For sure there’s some work to be done and there are things to improve, but this is normal. We’ll see what tomorrow brings in qualifying, when everybody is pushing to the maximum.
He turns 39 in a couple of weeks ?
But Kimi’s body can still take whatever an #F1 circuit throws at him ?#RussianGP ?? pic.twitter.com/xJcr1adeCF
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 28, 2018
