2021 Russian GP : Post-Friday practice comments from Lewis and Bottas

Mercedes AMG Formula 1 team’s domination continues in Sochi, Russia as team topped both Friday practice sessions with 1-2 finish.

Valtteri Bottas led the way for Mercedes by finishing P1 in both practice sessions ahead of his team mate Lewis Hamilton. The Flying Fin completed 25 laps in the morning session with a fastest time of 1:34.427. While Lewis Hamilton completed 23 laps with a fastest time of 1:34.638, +0.211s down on his teammate’s time.

In the Afternoon session Bottas completed 19 laps with a fastest time of 1:33.593, which is good enough to put him in P1 ahead of Lewis. The Brit completed 22 Laps with a fastest lap time of 1:33.637, +0.044s down on Valtteri’s time.

Lewis Hamilton

“We had two good sessions today pace-wise. We ticked off as much as we could working through different setup items and had very clean runs with no issues so overall it was a good day. Valtteri and I went quite different with our setups to see which areas work best and we’ll spend tonight studying the data to understand where we want the car for tomorrow and Sunday. It looks like it will be a lot of rain tomorrow, a big wet day, and we’ll have to consider our setup with that in mind but keeping an eye on Sunday which is set to be dry.”

Valtteri Bottas

“If you look at the timings and based on my own feeling in the car, it was a good day. From the first run, I had confidence in the car and the balance was very good so I could focus on my driving, looking for small gains.

Tomorrow looks like it will be wet, so it’ll be a completely different experience. The main thing is the car feels good on the long runs so that’s encouraging for Sunday which should be dry. I really find my flow on this track and I enjoy it – when the car works well here, it’s great fun to drive.”

Andrew Shovlin, Head of track side operations

“We had a pretty good balance to start with today and were able to put in decent times on all tyre compounds. We’ve often struggled on the Soft tyre this year but today it seemed to work well. Our long run performance was OK, but we’ve not got the balance quite right so there’s a bit of work to do there overnight. The forecast looks very wet for tomorrow, especially in the morning but we’re expecting dry conditions for the race. That’s going to give us an interesting compromise to deal with, finding a setup that works well in a wet qualifying but also has good long run pace in the dry. Overall though a reasonable start to the weekend.”