Sergey Sirotkin impresses on his Renault debut

Renault has clearly been underperforming since the beginning of the season. The 13th place achieved by Sergey Sirotkin at the end of the first practice session is a pleasant surprise. Especially since the new test driver for the Diamond team believes he wasn’t in the best conditions to set a time: « Today, my goal was to give the team exactly what it wanted. I tried to keep a cool head even though it is obviously very exciting to drive an F1. It’s always positive when you achieve a good time, but I felt comfortable reaching this level even though my position in the seat was not ideal.

But his best time, at 1’40”898, is also clearly ahead of his teammate Jolyon Palmer’s time (1’41”671), who was only 18th in the same session. This doesn’t help the British driver’s situation, as he is already under threat due to performances significantly behind those of Kevin Magnussen. A replacement by Esteban Ocon is already being mentioned after only four races…

The 2014 GP2 champion explained his underwhelming performance by stating that he focused on aerodynamic work rather than pursuing outright performance. Nevertheless, in the second session, he finished 18th again and was five-tenths behind Kevin Magnussen, who was back in his seat. “I wasn’t able to achieve a perfect or even decent balance today. It’s always a bit frustrating, but fortunately, we had a day where both cars were reliable. This allows us to have plenty of data to analyze in order to make progress tomorrow. The track is quite slippery, but we managed to complete laps without any issues. We just need to address the unwanted oversteer, and our pace should improve.”

As for the Danish team member, he hopes to have problem-free qualifying having finished 11th starting from the pit lane: « *Let’s hope qualifying goes without mistakes or issues before seizing all the opportunities that arise in the race.* »