F1 returns to Sepang after nine years as Mercedes struggles for pace on opening day in Malaysia

“It was a really cool experience to go out on track here at the PETRONAS Sepang International Circuit for the first time. I have never driven here and it is great to make up for that on this legendary track. The support we received as a team was fantastic too, so thank you to all the fans who were here today and who will still come over the weekend. In these warm conditions combined with the aggressive asphalt and the characteristics of the circuit, tire degradation during practice was high. We had expected that at the start of the weekend. The strong overheating of the tires does, however, neutralise a little the performance of the extra downforce we gained with our update. The cars are in a completely different window than usual. I do not think we set our car up today quite as it would have needed to be. We will try to get on top of that overnight. If we manage it, we can hopefully fight right at the front for the rest of the weekend.”

“We had a decent first day on track here in Malaysia. The PETRONAS Sepang International Circuit is incredible to drive — it is fast and flowing, really super cool. We were able to complete a lot of laps in both sessions and we worked through our entire programme. We collected a lot of data that will help us understand the new update we have brought here, and it will also help us make improvements for the rest of the weekend in Malaysia. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, though. Red Bull seems to be the fastest both on a single fast lap and on long runs. McLaren and Ferrari are also competitive, especially at higher fuel loads. The track offered fairly little grip today, but conditions will probably improve by Saturday and Sunday. We will work hard tonight to find improvements and give our best in qualifying tomorrow afternoon.”

“Today we tried the latest update package on both cars. Instead of the hoped-for improvement in lap times, however, we struggled with a tricky setup and heavily overheating tires. In the first practice we had some components on the cars that may have distorted the situation. In the second practice, however, both cars were in a representative configuration and it looked as if we were still trailing, particularly behind Red Bull. We have some good ideas for setup changes that we want to investigate during the overnight simulator work. We will also analyse today's data further to understand why we are apparently lacking a bit of pace. We are optimistic that these analyses will bear fruit with such a new package. The top times are not particularly representative, and we should be able to improve our single-lap pace relatively easily. Our concern is more the long runs, where we had an unusually large pace deficit. That will be the harder problem to solve.”