The opening day of the Mexican grand Prix weekend was a very difficult day for the Scuderia Toro Rosso team as they had a Power Unit issue on each side of the garage.
In FP1, they had an issue with Brendon Hartley's car, which meant he had really bad drivability, so he was really struggling with the car and, in the end, it was a terminal issue, so they had to stop him and fit a spare engine that was already in the pool โ so he can continue on in the weekend without a penalty โ but it meant it was the end of his session.
They were also struggling with the cooling of the car in general, so that was another big focus of the day โ because this is a track where the ambient pressure is very different to anywhere else, that it's very hard on engine and cooling system, so the team were testing lots of things throughout the day to find the optimum going into the race.
Even with all of these challenges there are some positives: the pace looks pretty good regarding the low-fuel runs โ and they we're happy with where Brendon was โ and on the high-fuel the pace and degradation look reasonable.
โWe had a bit of a slow start this morning because of an engine problem from the word go in FP1, so we lost a bit of time, but the team did a great job to get the car ready for this afternoon's FP2,โ the New Zealander said.
โI feel I'm getting better on the short-runs and to end up P13 isn't bad. I learned some good lessons on the longer runs and, even if we had an engine failure, the rest of the day was very positive and I got a lot out of it. I'm a lot more well-prepared than a week ago! We will now work hard tonight and I look forward to tomorrow!โ
