Report: Friday Practice complete in Saudi Arabia

The team have begun the process of pouring over the data following a busy day of Friday Practice running in Jeddah.

Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant both completed a full race distance across their FP1 and FP2 outings, getting through a mixture of long and short run programmes.

“Like in Bahrain, the conditions change quite a lot between FP1 and FP2,” Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance, shared after running had concluded.

“Following a good FP1, we didn’t quite get the changes right for the cooler evening session. However, we were doing some experiments, which gave interesting results.

“It is clear what we need to do, and we already have enough experience of the FW45 that we are confident we can get it all together for qualifying tomorrow.

“We appear to be in a tight group of teams, and we will need to maximise everything tomorrow. It won’t be easy but there is no reason we can’t do it so that both drivers get an excellent chance of a strong qualifying session.

“Whatever happens in qualifying, we had decent long run pace today, overtaking is easier than in Bahrain and we will be looking to increase our points tally on Sunday.”

Alex Albon completed 50 laps today, ending FP1 and FP2 in P9 and P14 respectively, and was pretty happy with his time behind the wheel of his FW45.

“I think it's been a very positive day and we've definitely got pace in the car, so I'm feeling optimistic.

“We're missing a little bit of set-up during FP2 for our qualifying simulation but everything else feels pretty good.

“I don't want to speak too soon but I'm feeling good with the car so let's see how it goes.”

Logan Sargeant has raced at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit before, but today was a completely different experience for him as he got up to speed with the sinuous venue in a Formula 1 car.

“I think for the first day in Jeddah, it went pretty smoothly, with everything going according to plan,” Sarge reacted, after placing P17 and P18 across both sessions.

“The pace doesn't look too bad as a team and hopefully we can continue to build on that.

“It's definitely a tricky and challenging circuit but I'm enjoying it, so hopefully I can continue to keep pushing and find a little bit more time tomorrow.”