F1 | Red Bull, Sergio Perez: “We hope to put pressure on Mercedes”

Another anonymous Friday for Sergio Perez, who gravitates towards the lower part of the top 10 in Sochi. The Mexican set the ninth best time in the first free practice session, one second and seven tenths behind leader Valtteri Bottas. In the afternoon, however, he slipped to eleventh position, with a gap reduced to 1.3s. Perez will have to hope that qualifying takes place, either tomorrow in the wet or on Sunday morning before the race: if the weather is not kind, he will use the ranking of the last free practice session held to determine the race grid. At the moment, Red Bull has no one in the front rows to launch the attack on Mercedes: Verstappen, in fact, will start from the last row, due to the penalties following the homologation of the fourth Power Unit.

F1 | Free practice analysis in Sochi: Ferrari good on race pace, the fastest lap needs to be reviewed

"I think we have some good information for tomorrow's qualifying, which probably won't take place due to the rain, so today was probably the last opportunity to run in the dry before which – explained the Mexican – I think there is potential in the car for this weekend, we will have to be perfect. My performances in the first and second sectors were good, but there are still areas to work on in the third. There are some set-up changes we will need to make to adapt to the weather conditions for qualifying, but we will have a lot of interesting things to analyze tonight. With Max starting from the back it will be a bit of a challenge for the team, obviously Mercedes are very strong at this track, hopefully we can put some pressure on them and qualify very close to them, that would be ideal".