Kevin Gleason: “The car feels strong and starts to handle well, I am happy. I really like the track, fast and challenging as I like them, and quite similar to Sepang. I’m enjoying it! It’s new to me, but I prepared a bit on simulator and watching videos. Still, that can never give you some of the feelings, like the track’s elevation or corner sharpness.”

Andrea Belicchi: “I think the Honda cars will dominate this weekend, they seem to have much more speed on the straights and I think they haven’t shown all today. We are quite ok with our car, we only need to fine-tune the set-up, but I think we cannot fill the speed gap. I have raced here often with the WEC, but it’s almost like being on a different track: except for the lines, everything else, like cornering speed and braking points are completely different, and previous experience doesn’t give much advantage.” 

Franz Engstler: “We progress and are heading on the right direction but we still have a lot of oversteer, especially in the three very fast corners. We still haven’t the smooth feel which makes driving nice, the car is quite brisk, with oversteer coming all of a sudden.”

Lorenzo Veglia: “It’s starting to come together. Compared to Sepang, where we were three seconds off the pace, we are now a little bit less than a second down, so it means we are improving and the hard work is paying off. I had a couple of smoking braking, because the repartition wasn’t ideal, but we’ll sort it. Also, the track was very dirty on the sides, it was scary to go off, even slightly, the right line.”