After the first two practice sessions for the Azerbaijan Formula 1 Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo have every reason to believe they will be in contention for the weekend.
But there are some concerns.
Tsunoda qualified 15th in the first free practice on Friday and improved slightly to 11th in the second session of the day. The results were reversed for Ricciardo, as the Australian driver qualified 10th in free practice one before dropping to 16th in free practice two.
Both drivers saw positive signs on the day.
“The start was quite tricky but we made good progress between FP1 and FP2, just not enough to get into the top of the midfield,” Tsunoda said in the team's post-session report. “It's hard to have a good balance everywhere on a track like this, but we were able to improve with each session. Now we just need to make some fine adjustments and fix the bounce we experienced in FP2. We already have some ideas to improve for tomorrow's FP3 and have a good qualifying.”
As for Ricciardo, he saw FP1 as a positive sign.
“We had some good and bad results today. FP1 went well and it was good to be back at this circuit. It's been a few years since I last drove here. I was in a relatively good flow and felt good. It's quite slippery here so we made some changes in FP2 to see if we could improve grip, but it didn't feel like the changes ultimately improved things,” Ricciardo said. “We knew what worked this morning and it put us in a good position, so if we can do a bit better with the set-up in FP1 then we should be able to put in a good lap in qualifying tomorrow and fight for the front of the midfield. On any street circuit, if you can put a good lap together you can get a very good result and we'll do our best to make it work.”
Racing director Alan Parmain called the day's race “fair” but noted there were several areas of improvement the team needed to focus on ahead of Saturday and ultimately the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“It was a decent day for us, although there was still plenty of time to find the pace as the car balance was not perfect, which meant neither driver was fully satisfied. In FP1 Daniel ran the latest spec and in FP2 both cars ran it to compare the floors. We will continue to analyse the data this evening,” said Permanente.
“Our first impression is that it's a big step in the right direction. As always on this street circuit, the track is evolving throughout the day and we need to adjust the balance to match that evolution,” added VCARB racing director. “We will be looking closely at the downforce levels tonight and may adjust them for FP3 and/or qualifying.”
