Following last weekend’s British Grand Prix, Formula One drivers and teams stayed at Silverstone for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, Round 5 of the curtailed 2020 F1 season.

The name of the grand prix has changed for this weekend, but the pecking order is seemingly the same that was seen a few days ago. Mercedes was over a second fastest than the best rival, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in last weekend’s qualifying session, and today indicated that the Brackley-based outfit has kept its advantage, making it almost impossible for their rivals to fight for the top two places.

Ferrari

"We tried a couple of things today and overall I’m a little bit happier than last week, but we are not very competitive at the moment and we need to have a look at the data to see what we can work on. On the Soft tyre the car is good on the first lap, then it becomes a bit more difficult. We are trying to save the harder compounds for the race, so we need to see where we are in quali and then we will decide the strategy for the race. There are some key area where we need to try to improve the car. They are probably small things, but hopefully we will get a bit more competitive. On the engine failure I can say that it was very sudden. We have to see what it is but it will take some time, because the engine has to be sent to Maranello for analysis."

"It wasn’t bad today, although a bit more difficult than last Friday. We are working to try and understand the tyres, as there’s quite a big change of grip between the Medium and the Soft. We are a bit too slow on the Medium, which is unusual for us. The car balance feels pretty good, it’s just the general performance which is not as good as we had hoped for on the Medium. There are still a few things to work on in view of qualifying tomorrow with the aim of going through Q2 on Medium tyres, which we think a lot of cars will try to do. Anyway, it’ll be very interesting to see what compound everyone will start the race on and it should be an unpredictable race with many different strategies."

Red Bull

“We did everything we wanted to today so I’m pretty pleased with that and overall it has been alright. The gap to Mercedes last weekend was big, so of course I think it’s quite normal that we can’t magically change things within a few days, but we are doing what we can. We tried a few things with the car, I think some were really decent but we will of course have to go through it properly tonight and see tomorrow. I think it could be quite close in qualifying with the group behind but then in the race it could be quite lonely again. The softer tyres had a lot more degradation today and I think it’s almost impossible to do a one stop now. I guess you will see a lot of two stop strategies in the race but I don’t expect the change in tyres to really set the order any differently.”

“We’re making progress session by session in terms of trying to get what I want from the car and now we just need to do our homework tonight to come back stronger tomorrow. It was a pretty straightforward day and we played around with a few things to see what helped and what didn’t. This weekend the tyre compounds are a step softer which I’m not a huge fan of as I think they’re too soft for this circuit. Let’s see what everyone does tomorrow but I think it’s quicker to run on the mediums than the softs. The thing is we only have a certain number of medium and hard tyres for the weekend which means you’re a little stuck with strategy, so it will be important tomorrow which tyre you decide to run in each qualifying session. It’s only Friday and everyone’s hiding something today so tomorrow we’ll get a truer picture.”

Mercedes

"It's been a good start to the weekend. We brought a lot of learnings over from last week and with just a few small adjustments to the set-up we've been able to fine-tune the car and make some progress, which is positive. Both the Soft and Medium tyres feel very similar out there and there's not a huge amount of time between them. We saw some overheating with the tyres, so they are going to take some nursing to get the best out of them. It was great to take the win here last weekend, but I know just how strong Valtteri is and as we saw last weekend, absolutely anything can happen in F1."

"We learned a lot last week, so the starting set-up today was good. The car felt more comfortable than in the race or in qualifying, so the balance already feels pretty much there. We focused a lot on the tyres today and there doesn't seem to be a lot between the Medium and the Soft when it comes to single lap pace. The Soft is struggling with the high-speed corners, especially in these hot temperatures and if you're running on higher fuel. We'll look tonight at all the options and make sure we get the plan right for qualifying. It should be good fun tomorrow."

Haas

“It was a good Friday, you know, P13, P15 – those are the positions we’re fighting for. The car felt absolutely mega from the morning. We worked around tricky conditions with the hot, softer tyres and then the wind also picked up a little more this afternoon, which made things a bit more interesting. Generally, I’ve been very happy with the car though. I think we’ve done a good job; I think we’re moving in the right direction. Hopefully we can find a little bit more for the race on Sunday. We know what we have with our package and we always push as hard as we can.”

“We couldn’t really get the car working in FP1, but it was a lot better in FP2. We’re lacking a little bit of straight-line speed compared to the other car. We lost a little bit of time, but we know it’s got to be there somewhere. The car was much better in the corners, handling-wise, as a positive. It’s tricky this time around as we have these softer tyres. It’s a challenge. The higher pressures aren’t making it easier, it’s tough, but I guess those things are the same for everyone. It’s going to be interesting to see what we do with strategy and how to manage these soft tyres on the track. Last week the car handled very well so we need to get it back into the same kind of handling. It’s obviously slightly different with these tyres, we at least have the C2 and C3 knowledge from last week, but the C4 tyre is a completely different story.”

Alfa Romeo Orlen

“The car felt a little bit better than last weekend but there’s still plenty of speed to be found. It was a fairly straightforward Friday, we are working to get some more performance for tomorrow but we will only find where we really stand in qualifying. As always here, we will need to see what conditions we have tomorrow: hopefully we will make a little step forward and improve.”

“Silverstone is one of the greatest tracks to drive an F1 car, especially in the fast corners. It was a bit of a shock coming in after racing in DTM last week, but it didn’t take me long to settle in. The car feels pretty good, something I noticed since the tests in Barcelona, but there is still work to do to find more speed. We are working, trying hard to bring more performance but so is everyone: we will need to do our best to gain some ground on everyone else.”

“It’s always a bit of a challenge to come in after sitting a session out, but we have plenty of data from last week to help us out. We got good info from FP2, we managed to do at least one run during our qualifying simulation and a high-fuel run even though we had to stop the session with a minute to go due to a small technical issue. As always on Friday, we will need to go through all the data we collected and find the best way forward to be in a better shape come qualifying.”

Williams

"It was good fun out there and the conditions were very different to last week. It was very tricky on the C4 tyre, but I think everybody found that tough. At least a third of the grid set their quickest time on the medium tyre and not on the soft. I think it will be an interesting and tricky qualifying session. I think if you play it right you can set your quickest lap on the mediums, so there will be some interesting strategies tomorrow."

"Overall it was a positive day. Straight away coming back to the same track you already feel in the rhythm. FP1 was quite good and the balance was feeling nice on the new C4 tyre. In all honestly, I struggled to find a comfortable balance in FP2, but again we were just trying some different things. I think it’s going to be quite an exciting and unpredictable race. I’m not sure how the tyre compounds are going to react so I’m looking forward to it. I think if we can show what we showed today, then we will be quite competitive.”

Racing Point

"I’m feeling a lot more confident in the car: it helped that I was able to be in the simulator last week to prepare for the weekend. I’m much more familiar with how the team works and I’m more up to speed behind the wheel. It felt like a routine Friday and I was able to extract the pace of the car much more quickly today, which is a big positive. I’m pleased with today because we were able to try a few things with the set-up of the car, and it helped me adapt to the car. We were then able to work through today's programme effectively, which gives us a good starting point for the weekend. I felt that there was pace to be found on the medium tyre because I didn’t have a totally clean lap, and I left some time on the table at the final corner, but all in all, it was a positive Friday."

"It was definitely a positive day of running and it’s looking very tight between the teams. We’ve done plenty of laps around Silverstone now, which helps close all the gaps up, so it’s about maximising everything this weekend. We’ll go away tonight and make sure we come back tomorrow with the car dialled in and ready to go for qualifying. Pirelli has brought a softer range this weekend, which is giving all the teams a challenge because degradation is expected to be more of a factor in the race. Tomorrow’s practice will be important to help us prepare for qualifying, and I’m expecting an exciting race on Sunday.”

Renault

“The first thing we wanted to understand was the softer choice of tyres and that was an important area today. It looks positive and the car was clearly quite quick. Daniel’s run on the soft was certainly fast, which is good as we both tested different things and it’ll be interesting to see the comparisons. Hopefully we can repeat that tomorrow. We had a few problems here and there, but nothing too crazy and the car generally felt reasonable all day.”

“In the morning we did quite a bit of data gathering so we knew it wasn’t going to be totally representative. For the afternoon, we had a bit of a warm up, made a change to the car, which worked, and it felt great. We had a good run on the hard and then on the soft as well. On that soft run, we still missed out a bit in some areas, so there’s definitely more there. Our long runs also looked decent, so that’s a good base for Sunday. I think the wind direction is changing tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens there. Overall, it’s been a good day for us.”

McLaren

“A bit of a different Friday, choosing to run only soft tyres through the whole day. All cars seem to struggle with degradation, so it was important to gather as much information as possible to learn on that side. Tyre choice will play a big part for the rest of the weekend, so we needed as much data as possible in order to take better decisions.

“Generally, the feeling with the car in FP2 was quite decent. We need to double-check the speed on the straights, as usual in Silverstone, but in general the feeling was fine today.”

“A tricky day, not as straightforward as last weekend. Trying to understand these tyres was a bit more difficult as they are quite soft. Obviously, everyone out there lapped pretty well on new tyres, but they degrade a lot in the high-fuel long runs. So, we’re struggling with getting them to last, but at the same time I think we got a good understanding of the balance. Like last week, I think conditions are going to change quite a lot come tomorrow, so we’ll wait to see what happens.”

AlphaTauri

“Today I didn’t feel as good in the car as last weekend, so we’ve done many tests between FP1 and FP2. We wanted to try different set up directions to improve the car but I didn’t feel like we’ve found the best set up yet. I was pretty happy straight away last weekend, so we’ll need to analyse everything tonight and work from there. The gaps are really small but if we want to have a chance for Q3, I think we’ll need to find a bit more performance for tomorrow.”

“It was a decent Friday and we did quite a lot of productive laps today. The C4 wasn’t a big surprise, we will continue to make our tyre evaluation to understand what they like or dislike, and as usual, we will analyse all the data to come back tomorrow in the best possible shape for both qualifying and the race.”