Jonathan Eddolls (Chief Race Engineer):
"The Austrian weekend is a great event on the F1 calendar and the home of Red Bull. There had been a lot of discussions over the previous days with respect to the weather, as we had originally thought FP2 would be a washout and a chance of rain in both sessions, but eventually we had a dry FP1 and FP2. Being such a short lap, the sessions feel very busy with little room to breathe between laps and runs – it's also quite a technical track so it's beneficial to give the drivers as many laps as possible. We came to this event with a new aero package, which we fitted to Brendon's car for today. FP1 was spent testing various options of aero configuration with him, to confirm both the wind tunnel and CFD results. So far, from the data analysis, the package appears to be behaving as expected and we are seeing the gains, so the plan will be to fit this to both cars from FP3 onwards. Pierre spent today's first session carrying out mechanical setup work and starting to understand the tyre behaviour, so we had a good direction for FP2. This track is tough on cars, particularly given the number of exit kerbs, the yellow sausage kerbs are quite harsh as well, so with both drivers pushing hard and using every last part of the track we sustained some damage to bodywork components. More significant was the trackrod failure in FP2 at the end of Pierre's long run. He was closing the lap and coming up on the two Force Indias - who were just starting their laps - when he had a big front wash out from their dirty air and hit the yellow kerbs. This overloaded the trackrod and caused the failure. The mechanics did a great job to get the car repaired and back out on track for the long run at the end of the session, so Pierre wasn't compromised too much in terms of track running. Given that Pierre didn't complete a lap on the Ultrasofts, his pace is looking competitive so we are positive looking ahead for tomorrow. We have some work to do to give Brendon the car balance he needs, and that will be the focus tonight in preparation for tomorrow."
Tomorrow the 2 cars will have the upgrades
