2014 Russian GP driver reaction - practice
The 21 drivers have their say on the inaugural day of action in Sochi
Friday 10 October 2014 17:52, UK
The 21 drivers have their say on the inaugural day of action at the Sochi Autodrom in Russia.
Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel: “Does getting back in the car help us after what’s happened? It does and it doesn’t. It helps to get your head elsewhere and focus on the day job – looking after the best possible set up and comparing the tyres and learning the new track, it keeps you occupied.
“But on the other hand it’s only been a couple of days, so it’s quite fresh and difficult. It looks like we will struggle here; it’s a nice track, but maybe not made for us.”
Daniel Ricciardo: “After what happened in Japan, you try and do the best you can. I would be lying if I said other things weren’t on my mind, but you do what you can to make sure you’re 100% committed to driving and that’s the best way for our job and our headspace. It’s the best way, but it was tricky and not as easy as I expected.
“It was our last Friday with that engine, so it’s not a worry that she turned off at the end there. We tried a few settings and we’re not so fast here, the straights are long and we’re suffering a bit.”
Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton: “I like the new circuit; it's got really good grip and great corners, with a lot at medium speed. It's good fun. The car has been feeling really good today. McLaren look close which is great for everyone as it should make for a decent race. We've got quite a good balance with the car so there are a lot of boxes ticked but we still have work to do to see if we can improve for tomorrow.”
Nico Rosberg: “That was a very productive day from an engineering point of view. The team decided to go two different ways in terms of setup. I took a very creative setup for my car in the second practice session, which didn't work out. So we will go back to the conservative way for tomorrow, because we saw that Lewis was very quick with that. The track is really cool to drive, very enjoyable. Turn three is a very special one and the asphalt is very smooth, so the tyres last long. We won't see that many pit stops on Sunday, I guess. That's a bit surprising to me.”
Ferrari
Fernando Alonso: “The track is very unusual and I didn’t think that Formula 1 had already got such a large following here. Also surprising today was the good level of grip from the track surface, which is unusual on a brand new circuit. From this point of view, I felt comfortable right from the first lap and that helped a lot when it came to today’s most important job, namely learning the track.
“We worked a lot on set-up and found the two compounds had behaved in similar fashion and tyre performance improved as the laps went by. The track is very hard on brakes, but that is a specific thing we can work on this evening to be well prepared for qualifying.”
Kimi Raikkonen: “This first day of practice was given over to learning the track, which I like and although it’s new, the grip level was good. In the first session, we went through our programme step by step, even if towards the end of the session I was unable to complete my last run.
“In the afternoon, we focused on tyre behaviour, with both compounds ta
