Race pace the target for Team HRC at Portimão

“It was a positive Friday for us and I felt strong and confident on my bike. At the same time, when I made a few laps with Alvaro and a final one close to Johnny towards the end of FP1, I could feel that something is still missing. Generally speaking, we’ve found consistent pace, and this is good - we put the focus on the tyre life because we generally struggle at the end of races once the grip drops significantly. So we tried to work to improve this area of the bike and yes, we’ve found something, nothing huge but definitely something that allows us to be more consistent. Looking at the big picture, I feel both good and a bit frustrated because, compared to the top three guys, I’m still losing a little everywhere, which means that we need to keep up the good work and try to close this gap. Looking at what we achieved during the last test and also here today in terms of setup, I feel happy and am looking forward to tomorrow. Our target for qualifying is a place on the first two rows and then, for the race, to try and be consistent throughout and especially in the final stages, and of course to score the best possible result.”

“It’s been a good first day for us considering that we’ve worked a lot on race pace, finding quite good feeling over the two sessions. In the final part of FP1 we tried a new tyre but to be honest we expected more. In the end, the feeling wasn’t perfect with this solution, but it was good to try it today because that helped us to understand the direction to take tomorrow. The team has done a very good job and so we can say so far, so good.”