Scuderia Alpha Tauri’s Chief Engineer Jonathan Eddolls says that the team have been able to hit the ground running at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico.
Speaking following the action on Friday he said:
We’ve been able to hit the ground running here in Mexico, showing a good performance and completing our test plan. This weekend we needed to take a PU penalty with Yuki, so he will start from the back of the grid, therefore his focus has been on long-runs, in preparation for the race. Even so, he was still able to have an excellent short-run performance and continue building his confidence in the car. For Pierre, it was a more normal Friday plan with the focus on learning about the tyres and optimising the setup for the conditions we face this weekend. The track was very dirty and dusty in FP1, so the overall grip and balance was poor. This improved through the day, but we still didn’t reach a balance we were fully satisfied with, so there is more to find in the short-runs tomorrow. Overall, it was a solid Friday, the performance is good and we still have room to improve, so we’ll give it our all to challenge for good points on Sunday.”
Pierre Gasly has had a strong start to the weekend ending in fifth and sixth respectively and speaking following the track action the Frenchman said:
I must say, I’m very happy with today. We’ve finished both sessions in the top six and there are lot of positives with the car so far, I think we can even find some more performance tomorrow. It’s really slippery out there, which doesn’t feel great, but we’re still very competitive, so I’m really pleased. Looking to the race, the tyres felt pretty good as well. We know that usually here in Mexico the track isn’t so tough on the Hards, especially compared to last time out in Austin, but we’re happy with the long-running we’ve done so far, which we now need to analyse ahead of Sunday.”
Yuki Tsunoda ended the day in eighth place and speaking following the action he commented saying:
I’m quite happy with today, I think the balance of the car has been good and we’ve shown strong pace straight from FP1. We’ve obviously got the penalty, which means that our approach to Qualifying will be slightly different, but we’ve still collected a lot of important data for the engineers to analyse tonight. Mainly my focus is on the race, more so than the one lap pace for Qualifying, so I’ve done a lot of long-running today and I feel comfortable in the car so far.”