Report: Plenty of data gathered at Friday Practice in Miami

A fresh track surface was the main talking point on the first day of track running at the 2023 Miami Grand Prix.

The Miami International Autodrome, as expected, took some time to get rubbered in, with both Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant clocking up some valuable mileage in the unrelenting South Florida sunshine.

Alex, who scored a couple of points in last season’s maiden Miami GP, ended the two sessions in P15 and P10 respectively, whilst Logan was in P19 and P20 as he got to grips with the circuit.

“It was a tough day,” our No23 shared at the end of Friday’s running, adding: “I think we definitely had the car in a better window for FP2, however, it’s fair to say this track doesn’t suit us as the other circuits have in previous rounds.

“We’ll need to try get on top of it as much as possible, seeing what we can change tonight to improve the car.

“I think a lot of the problems are more car characteristics then set up, but we’ll give it a go. It’s clearly very close out there with fine margins, so it’s going to be a fight.”

Logan, competing a mere 18 miles from his home city of Fort Lauderdale, reflected on the opening day by saying: “[It was] a tricky day that wasn’t the smoothest.

“I know what I need to do tomorrow and it’s quite clear when I look at the data. I need to keep building mainly in Sector 1.

“We have a little bit of setup work that we need to do to try get the consistency between high-speed and low-speed better.

“The driving side will come, I have no doubt about that. We just need to dial everything in, put some clean laps in during FP3, then take it that last step in Qualifying.”

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, summarised Williams Racing’s Friday efforts by sharing: “The first Free Practice session was dominated by the new track surface and very high temperatures.

“This made the tyre behaviour a little tricky to predict and initially made the lap times very slow.

“However, the track improved quickly, which allowed the lap times to tumble, but this made testing things difficult. Nonetheless, we got through a lot of useful work in FP1.

“By the evening Free Practice session, the track had improved further and was cooling quickly as the sun set. “Despite another red flag interruption, we completed another good programme during which both drivers refined their car balance and tyre management.

“The next two days could be heavily influenced by the weather, but we did enough running today to be in a good position to adapt to whatever happens.

“The car is behaving quite well and with further tuning before qualifying, we should be in the usual tight midfield fight.”