Pierre Wache: 'It's been a challenging day'

Published on 02 October 2026 by Johan Peeters

Pierre Waché, Technical Director of Oracle Red Bull Racing, reflects on Friday’s free practice sessions for the Bahrain Grand Prix: “It’s been a challenging day here at Sepang, but also a very interesting one. It has been quite demanding for the drivers and the car because of the heat, but I think we have made a good start to the weekend. The track surface was extremely dusty, and the grip evolved a lot throughout the day, but we made a good start in the opening session, evaluating the package we brought to Baku and focusing on different types of corners, particularly in the low speed. Overall, it seems to be working better than what we brought last weekend.”

“In the second session, we had expected rain but, when that didn’t appear, we prioritised the long run on the medium tyre, as gaining data on tyre behaviour and degradation will be the most important thing for the rest of the weekend. In the end, that meant we ran out of time for Max to run the Soft, but Isack had the opportunity, and that was valuable. Isack had a few issues in the session with balance, but we will do our best to iron those out overnight. After that, in terms of relative performance, it is very difficult to judge, but so far, we are happy with where we are."