Pierre Gasly (Car 10):
“I was happy with today, I missed being behind the wheel a lot! The target was to do as many laps as we could, because with pre-season testing two days shorter this year, we have to try to be more efficient and cover more things. Overall, we can be pleased as we managed to complete the programme we set for the day and I felt comfortable in the car straight away. We tested a few more things compared to last year, also on my side in terms of driving, to understand how to get on top of everything, and there were some really positive results. There are many areas we are still exploring, we still need to figure certain areas out as it’s a new car with new parts. I think we found some good directions for the next few days, so now we have quite a lot to study.”
Jody Egginton (Technical Director):
“The first proper day of running for Pierre went quite well overall. We covered a good number of test items together with some aero data collection with the rakes fitted and the normal systems and PU setting adjustments. The reliability of the car was again very good with a lot of kilometres completed, allowing us to tick all the boxes on the programme. We have taken a further step in our understanding of the car and will be putting this data to good use in the coming days, both here in Barcelona and also back in Faenza and Bicester where the aero, design, and vehicle performance groups are flat out preparing numerous developments for evaluation.”
Toyoharu Tanabe (Honda F1 Technical Director):
“For the second day of testing, our work followed on from what we did yesterday, with functionality checks as well as beginning to work on optimising our PU settings based on yesterday’s feedback and data. Pierre did 147 laps, the second highest number on the day. Overall another solid day’s work with plenty more data to study.”