Sergio Perez:
“My first impressions of the new car are positive. Obviously, there’s still a long way to go with a lot of things we have to get on top of – but it’s definitely a promising start. We spent the morning learning about the car and did a lot of aero testing with a couple of quick laps. Putting mileage onto the car is really important, especially with a limited amount of testing days available, and we have already gathered good information for the engineers. Hopefully we can keep improving in the coming days.”

Lance Stroll:
“I feel good but it’s still early days. We had a smooth afternoon and I completed over 200 kilometres of running without any problems. That’s the best way to start a test. It nice to be back behind the wheel again after the winter break. The first day of testing is all about getting comfortable and clocking up the laps on the car. There’s a lot of work ahead of us over the next couple of weeks – but there’s a good atmosphere in the garage after day one.”

Tom McCullough, Performance Engineering Director:
“As well as today being the first day of testing, it effectively acted as the shakedown of the RP20. We were up late last night preparing the car – but we managed to take to the track for our first installation laps more or less on time. I have to thank the crew in Barcelona and everybody back at base for their hard work. Today we focussed on completing systems checks and putting mileage on the car. Later on we also began the aero mapping. The feedback from Checo and Lance has been positive and there were no significant dramas during the day.”