AlphaTauri engineer: "We're looking forward to rain this weekend"

Last weekend Pierre Gasly scored important points, but Daniil Kvyat unfortunately had to finish his race early. So the AlphaTauri team had work to do, also because several updates for the cars were ready.

"We had a busy week preparing the cars. We had a lot of support from the factory and we were able to bring several fixes and updates to the cars for this weekend. Also, it was a unique opportunity for us to race again in the same location, therefore being able to test different things aimed at improving the limitations we had in last week’s race.," said AlphaTauri's top executive in the Team Review on Friday.

Real risk of rain

"Our programme in the second free practice was a bit different to usual. Due to the heavy rain expected for tomorrow and Sunday morning, there’s a real risk of not having a Qualifying session. Therefore, we pushed to try and get the best possible performance in FP2, as these times may define the starting grid on Sunday".

The drivers of AlphaTauri have therefore both done three runs to set the fastest time possible. Gasly finished in eleventh position during the practice session, with Kvyat just behind in twelfth place. Whether it was indeed necessary to drive hard during VT2 will become clear tomorrow afternoon. "We are looking forward to some rain now to spice up the weekend.”