Kamui Kobayashi
“As we’d had so few laps in FP2 we went straight out in FP3 and started with a six lap run on the soft tyres. The car was understeering a bit more than yesterday and we still had an issue with tyre temperatures, but less than in FP1. For runs two and three we went onto the supersofts, running a different program to our normal FP3 which we had to do because of the lack of FP2 laps on Thursday.
“In Q1 we did two runs on supersofts. The first run was ok but I wanted a bit more front wing for the second run and went back out but we just didn’t have the pace to improve today and finished 21st. It’s fair to say it’s been a pretty tough weekend so far but tomorrow’s what really counts and if the weather forecasts are right and there might be rain, anything could happen. I’m just focused on doing the best job I can and even though it’s difficult for us right now, everyone’s still working as hard as ever – hopefully we’ll get some reward in the race.”
Marcus Ericsson
“For most of FP3 I was struggling with traction and pretty low grip on both tyre compounds. We did three runs, one on the softs and then two on the supersofts with different fuel loads so we could look at how they’d perform in both quali and the race.
“I had the same traction problem in Q1, even though the track temps had gone up from FP3 – I didn’t have enough grip to really push and with quite a few cars slowing down in the last sector I just couldn’t put together a clean lap. On my final push lap I was behind Massa going into turn five and he moved offline a bit which meant I had to change my braking point. I locked up and went into the barrier with him which was my mistake. It’s unfortunate it took him out too but it looks like the car is ok so now I want to put today behind me and concentrate on the race.”
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader
“Yet again we pushed the limits of the PU to extract the maximum performance from the ICE and the MGU-K and ran without any issues. We are ready to fight tomorrow, with different options of energy management to take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way.”