Toro Rosso struggles with lack of grip on Friday practice at Hockenheim

Daniil Kvyat (STR9-03)

First Practice Session
Best lap: 1:20.337, pos. 9^th, 28 laps

Second Practice Session
Best lap: 1:19.452, pos. 12^th, 27 laps

“Another normal Friday where we worked through our programme as much as possible. We will have a look at all the data tonight and prepare ourselves for tomorrow, where I think we can do well. The heat? Well it just means we need to be careful in looking after our tyres but it’s the same for everyone, so we will just need to do our job.”

Jean-Eric Vergne (STR9-01)

First Practice Session
Best lap: 1:20.586, pos. 12^th, 23 laps

Second Practice Session
Best lap: 1:19.760, pos. 15^th, 32 laps

“I wouldn't say we had a perfect Friday today. I wasn't really happy with the car balance during both sessions and this means we have now a lot of work to do. We will have a look at all the data we collected to improve the car and aim for a good Qualifying session. Especially here on this track, it's important to have the highest possible starting position. It's possible, we have done it in the past so I remain confident for tomorrow.”

Phil Charles (Chief Race Engineer): “We worked through a lot of our programme today. We had some tests to do across the two cars, some small new aero bits that we’ve compared. Even though we managed to get through our programme, it’s clear to say that we had quite a tricky day and neither driver is particularly happy with their balance. We’ve also struggled a little bit with general lack of rear grip, so we’ve got a little bit of homework to do tonight. We just need to understand where our happiness needs to be with the car in terms of our set up and try to improve on the rear grip. We are not where we normally are or where we want to be on a Friday, so there’s some work to do tonight.”

Ricardo Penteado (Renault Sport F1 track support leader): “We ran the new software upgrades trialled in Silverstone and saw a good step in energy management and ICE performance. Temperatures have obviously been very high today but each element of the Power Unit has worked well, as expected, which will allow us to push tomorrow and get a bit higher in the times.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso