Lewis said this week that he’s neither a fan of track walks or simulators and believes he can learn a new track in just a few laps.
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“Lewis was pretty quick today”, Rosberg acknowledged. “So I think I feel very, very comfortable with the progress the team is making”. Hamilton set his best time on a set of super-soft tyres, then spoiled a succession of laps with minor errors at turn one and turn three, according to f1fanatic.
Meanwhile, Force India’s Sergio Perez concluded the day in third on a 1m 45.336s, 0.423secs off Rosberg – and 1.113secs off Hamilton.
Rosberg’s day then took a turn for the worse after he reported a problem with his Mercedes, and was told to stop his vehicle on track with 20 minutes of the afternoon session remaining. FIA officials, including race director Charlie Whiting, spent the two-and-a-half hour period in between Friday’s practice sessions trying to resolve the issue.
“Now I’m here and I want to win this race because that is the best approach for me to have: to get the best out of my race weekends”.
“That hindered me a little bit, but one weekend it’s that way and one week it’s the other way, but on a new track it’s a little more paralysing”.
“I felt a bit bad about it”. When we all do our job perfectly, it’s like the icing on the top of the cake when you get the win.
“But tomorrow I have plenty of time to work on one-lap speed and I’ll get there”.
“I am confident because I believe in the team, in the auto and sometimes also believe in myself!” When the fast show returned to Barcelona, he was handed Red Bull’s second-best strategy call, a three-stopper, which allowed team-mate Max Verstappen to win the race on his first appearance for the team.
“I didn’t brake too late, I actually came off the brakes too quick and tried to carry too much speed across the corner”, Ricciardo explained, “even at the apex I didn’t think there was a problem but then the rear kicked out and did quite a lot of damage”. The red flag was thrown as the now three-wheeled Red Bull came to a stop. You saw what happened with Daniel, it will be a rush to turn the auto around for session two’.
Sebastian Vettel just made the top 10, the four-time champion ending his day cruising back to the pits slowly as Ferrari diagnosed mechanical problems for both of their cars. “So we’ll see, a long way to go”, he continued.
“Once we’ll get the vehicle back we’ll be able to understand”.
Esteban Gutierrez was the first F1 driver to overshoot at Turn 15 and explore the run-off area, discovering – as with several runners in the earlier GP2 session – that getting out again requires a precisely executed spin-turn or a fiddly multi-point shuffle.
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Felipe Massa ended up a lowly 16th, while Rio Haryanto, Marcus Ericsson, Jolyon Palmer, Pascal Wehrlein and Felipe Nasr filled positions 17 though to 22.
