Friday: Force India, Williams, Renault, McLaren

There were top ten times in practice at for the Brazilian Grand Prix for Esteban Ocon, Felipe Massa, Nico Hulkenberg and Fernando Alonso.

Force India:
Esteban Ocon:“I’m happy with today. This morning the car was not at its best, but we made a massive step forward during second practice. The car feels much better now – close to where it should be, so it’s another good job by the team who made the correct decisions during the day. We need to keep improving ahead of tomorrow and hopefully we can be in our usual position for qualifying. It was very tough physically today because it’s very hot and humid – a bit like Singapore. I wasn’t expecting this and it was one of the toughest days in the car this year.”

Sergio Perez:“我只是今天下午开车所以佤邦s a lot of work to squeeze into one session. It wasn’t easy to make the balance adjustments because of the tyre degradation during the session, but the team has collected a lot of good information and this will help us take a good direction tomorrow.”

Williams:
Felipe Massa:“It was a good Friday. We managed to do some good lap times, and I think our long run pace is similar to many of the cars we are fighting. It will be a difficult fight in front of us, but we will try everything we can.”

Lance Stroll:“My day was alright. It was my first time here so I was getting used to the track and doing the runs. I have things to work on, like always, but that is okay. The positives are the car is feeling quite competitive, and it is just about putting everything together and we have the time to do that tonight and tomorrow. We got quite compromised in FP2 with some traffic so I didn’t do a perfect lap. We have been competitive in the rain so if we have that tomorrow for qualifying it is not a problem.”

Renault:
Nico Hulkenberg:“We got some good laps in through both sessions to identify where we need to make progress, but the car’s not a million miles away from where it needs to be. It’s always great to lap Interlagos and I’ve always got a good vibe here. We ended the day in the top ten; tomorrow’s job is to see how much further up the grid we can get.”

Carlos Sainz Jr:“It was a positive day for me as every time I went out in the car I felt we had made progress and I gained more confidence with the car. It was good that we didn’t see any rain in the afternoon as I was able to complete my full programme. We were able to get faster through the day and I think there’s more to come tomorrow.”

McLaren:
Fernando Alonso:“Today was more difficult than we’d expected. We had some problems in the first session, then a PU pressure issue in the second session. We lost some valuable track time, and in the end we didn’t manage to complete our programme. We tried to carry out the priority items on our run-plan, and we’re more or less happy with the outcome. There’s still a little more to come from the car tomorrow – some tuning on the set-up – so we’ll see what we can do. Times are very close here, and if it stays dry making it into Q3 is going to be tight. We’ll have more chance if it rains.”

Stoffel Vandoorne:“Today was a very positive day. FP1 was my first session driving here at Interlagos. We’ve brought a new upgraded aero package for my car this weekend so we started FP1 learning about and understanding that, which generally went very well. FP2 was maybe a little bit more difficult – we tried some different settings and made some changes that weren’t necessarily in the right direction. However, our long-run performance was extremely positive – one of our strongest of the year so far I would say. Everything is looking good for the race. We still need to put everything together tomorrow, but a good qualifying would put us in a strong position for Sunday.”