Preview, 19 Lap Sprint at F2 Miami, May 2

 

Challenging Friday ends in P2 and P6 for Saturday Sprint

• Kimi Antonelli will line up second with George Russell sixth for tomorrow’s Sprint in Miami.
• After an unexpected four-week hiatus, F1 resumes this weekend in Florida for the fourth round of the season.
• Teams were given an extra 30 minutes of practice time to build their understanding of the recent regulation tweaks before heading into Sprint Qualifying.
• Owing to a battery issue, Kimi was unable to complete any Soft tyre running in FP1 but showed little sign of that affecting him as he put his car P2 come SQ3.
• That was a boost after a tricky session and a day where neither driver felt completely at one with the W17.
• George will line up P6 for tomorrow’s 19-lap Sprint after suffering with tyre overheating and a tricky car balance.

• Kimi Antonelli

  We knew coming into this weekend that we would be in for a battle. Most teams have brought significant upgrades here and we knew that they would close the gap to us. With that said, I think we did a great job to recover from a difficult day to secure P2 for tomorrow’s Sprint.  I was struggling with the car on the Medium tyre but it felt better on the Soft compound. That gives me confidence that we have more performance to bring over the rest of the weekend.
  
  We will need to work hard though to unlock that speed. The Sprint gives us the chance to score some points and understand our long run pace better. We will need to take that into account when making changes for Qualifying and hopefully set ourselves up for a good Sunday.

  George Russell

  Whilst today was Sprint Qualifying and therefore not the most critical session of the weekend, we are disappointed with how our Friday turned out. We were overheating the tyres in the middle sector and struggled to find the right balance with the car. We need to work hard overnight to understand why that was. The meat of the weekend is still ahead of us, but we will need to improve if we are to be in the fight at the front.

  We knew our rivals would close the gap with their upgrades, but it was both surprising and impressive to see the size of the jump McLaren and Ferrari have made. I don’t expect the Sprint to offer us many opportunities and we’re not starting in a great place; let’s see what tomorrow brings though and hopefully we can put in a better performance come Qualifying on Saturday afternoon.

  Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

  It's always important to hit the ground running on a Sprint weekend and we unfortunately didn’t manage that today. We didn’t have the car in the right place in FP1, and the drivers were struggling to put laps together from the off. Our long run pace was more encouraging but still not where we'd like it to be. Added to that, we had an issue that interrupted George's early running and another that brought an early end to Kimi's session, costing him laps on the Soft tyre.

  Our difficulties carried into Sprint Qualifying. Kimi faired better than George but it's clear that we have time to find overnight on our energy management and overall car set-up. It seems our competitors have brought a bit more performance to this event than we have, but the W17 has been a well-balanced car at all the circuits we've been to this year and today it has been a handful. We will work hard to improve that for Grand Prix Qualifying and into Sunday’s race.