Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN had a productive Friday of practice at the Qatar Grand Prix, with both sessions devoted to discovering the Losail International Circuit and doing set-up groundwork, especially in the evening session under the floodlights. Kimi Raikkonen and Antonio Giovinazzi got to sample the track under different conditions, hot and sunny in FP1 and cooler in the following session, an experience of exploration in the latest venue to be added to the F1 calendar.

Having gathered all necessary data from the two hours of running, the team will now focus on getting ready for tomorrow's all-important qualifying session, which could prove crucial for the team's hopes of a good result on Sunday.

Kimi Raikkonen: "The conditions were not bad, actually better than we expected. We had worse situations in the past, in places like Bahrain, where the wind and the dust made it really hard on Friday, so this was pretty ok. We were able to do a good amount of laps, so hopefully we can use the data to improve ahead of tomorrow. Qualifying will be close, we will see what we get when the time comes."

Antonio Giovinazzi: "It was a good first experience driving here. I was really surprised by the amount of grip, already in FP1. The track is really nice, really fast and driving it is enjoyable. We had a good FP1 today, but found some traffic during our qualifying simulations in FP2. This will be a challenge tomorrow, as there's not much space to let someone through with all these high-speed corners. Qualifying will be really important, but we have another session tomorrow to try new things and get better."

Check out our Friday gallery from Qatar, here.