Friday: Alonso and Ferrari, 1 second behind Mercedes, do not want to panic

Fernando Alonso (No. 14) – 3rd and 3rd

For the Spaniard, discovering the circuit in its nighttime version was a surprising moment: « After many race days, it was really strange to race here in the dark even though it wasn’t very different from other night races, so we just have to get used to it. »

« From this point of view, the day was very useful during FP2 to learn the behavior of the tires and the car. » For him, all the data collected during daytime testing must be set aside: « Even though we did a lot of laps here during winter testing, now it’s like starting from scratch and we have to adapt to the new indications regarding different track conditions. »

If his Ferrari finished the day more than a second behind Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes, he urges his team not to panic: « We know our strengths and the areas where we need to improve, but we must not overreact by trying to close the performance gap. For now, we need to make steady progress while keeping an eye on reliability, which has allowed us to score good points in the first two races. »

Kimi Räikkönen (No. 7) – 6th and 14th

The Finn had a relatively challenging day: Overall, it was a difficult day because I didn’t feel comfortable with the car in both sessions. He even had a few close calls: In the first session, I damaged my floor on the curb in turn 4 and had to come back in. The team did a great job to get me back on track quickly, but then, due to a brake issue, I couldn’t finish the program.

Then he worked on the tires: « In the second session, we focused on the two Pirelli compounds, and with the soft, it was definitely better than with the medium. »

Finally, he concluded by analyzing data for the rest of the weekend: « Now we will focus on analyzing today’s data, especially the track changes from day to night, and we will try to improve for the qualifying and the race. »