San Marino GP: MF1 Friday practice notes

Comments from the MF1 team after Friday practices for the San Marino Grand Prix

Tiago Monteiro:

"I'm a bit frustrated today. We lost a lot of time with the old tyres, which was the set programme, but we shouldn't have. I did 75% of my day's practice on tyres that obviously didn't work, and that led us in the wrong direction in terms of set-up, as well as the way I had to drive the car. So naturally, I wasn't too happy about that."

"But then, when we put the new tyres on, it was like driving a completely different car and I gained two seconds right away. Thankfully, we have one more hour of practice tomorrow morning before qualifying to optimise the set-up with the new tyres, so I'm confident we can be a lot quicker."

Christijan Albers:

"I think we had a reasonable day, but I'm not really surprised, to be honest, because I know what we're capable of when we're on our game. We are a serious team, and we made the most of our Friday programme today. I also think that tomorrow, when we go for qualifying, we'll be able to find even more time."

Giorgio Mondini:

"This morning, I found the car difficult to drive, because it did not match my set-up preferences. But this afternoon, we made some changes that improved the handling quite a lot. The new spec front wing was much better but unfortunately, I broke it on a kerb, so we went back to the old one and I wasn't able to improve on my times."

"But I felt good in the car, and I think the team did a great job to keep moving up the time sheets. Christijan's fast lap, in particular, was excellent, so I think the engineers were able to get some good data."

Dominic Harlow, Chief Race and Test Engineer:

"We had a couple of very productive sessions today, just working through the programme we'd planned for our car updates. We also seem to have a good direction on the tyres we've selected for this weekend. Now it's just a question of siting down and going through the data to see how we can improve again tomorrow."

"I think we can probably increase Tiago's pace a bit more and move him closer to Christijan's time. Giorgio's obviously given us a lot of feedback from his tyre work today, so we're quite pleased with the work we've put in."

Andy Stevenson, Team Manager:

"We had a very productive test at Silverstone last week, where we ran the new aero parts for this weekend. Christijan arrived feeling very upbeat about the whole thing, and he's managed to put some very good laps together."

"He was consistently quick all the way through the session and then just steadily climbed up the table. Actually, if you take all the 3rd drivers out of the equation, we were 11th quickest today. So I think that puts us in a good position for the remainder of the weekend."

Tiago Monteiro
Chassis: M16-03
First Session: 15th, 1:29.697 (+4.946), 13 laps
Second Session: 21st, 1:27.544 (+2.501), 20 laps

Christijan Albers
Chassis: M16-02
First Session: 10th, 1:28.048 (+3.297), 13 laps
Second Session: 14th, 1:26.783 (+1.740), 24 laps

Giorgio Mondini
Chassis: M16-04, T-Car
First Session: 12th, 1:28.969 (+4.218), 20 laps
Second Session: 26th, 1:28.833 (+3.790), 27 laps

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