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Bahrain Grand Prix - team and driver preview quotes |
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TEAM PRINCIPALS: Flavio BRIATORE (Renault), Stefano DOMENICALI (Ferrari), Christian HORNER (Red Bull) PRESS CONFERENCE Q. It has been likened to a football match starting and then all the football players sitting down for the first 15 minutes. Flavio, I don't know what would happen at Queens Park Rangers but when we had the free practice this morning everyone stayed in the pits for the first half hour. We don't have any testing. Why doesn't everyone want to go out? Flavio BRIATORE: I believe everybody was waiting for somebody to go out to clean the circuit. It looked like at one point that everybody would go out together. This is the reason. Q. Do you think it is a waste of time, Christian? Christian HORNER: I think the problem is we are tyre limited as well on a day like today. The amount of tyres that we have for the two sessions is not enough. If we had another couple of sets of tyres... But unfortunately we cannot afford to waste them and in the first half an hour when the circuit is very dusty or green you end up in that stand-off situation where everybody is waiting. I think a couple more sets of tyres would certainly help seeing more cars on track early. Q. Stefano? Stefano DOMENICALI: I totally agree with Christian and Flavio for sure. We have seen for example our situation. We went out and for a different reason we had a spin, so we destroyed a set of tyres for our drivers, so then we had to use only that in the morning. Q. A question for Christian and Stefano about diffusers. When do you see your cars being able to run them and give us some idea about developments? SD: On our side we should be able to get ready with the first version of the diffuser at the next Grand Prix in Spain. For sure we have seen that in terms of development, let's say the situation gives you massive possibility for future development but it will take time. But at least for our side the first prototype should be ready for the next race. CH: We heard that Flavio has set up a business for diffusers with holes in. He is coming to the market very shortly with it, so I am sure we will be taking one very soon. No, in all seriousness, Adrian (Newey) has again stayed home this weekend to focus on integrating it onto our car. It is going to be one of the early European races, most probably Monaco. For us it is quite a big job because of the different back end solution that we have compared to our competitors. Q. You had a problem with the drive shaft last weekend. Has that been solved? Will we see any evidence of it this weekend? CH: It was solved one hundred per cent. Going into the race we felt very confident in China. We believed that it was a batch problem. We had done over 6000km of racing and testing and there was no problem in the race on Sunday and no problems at all here, so it looks like a rogue batch. Q. Let's go back five days. Fantastic win, your first ever. How were your feelings and how is the atmosphere within the team? CH: It was a fantastic result for the team, for Red Bull, for Mr Mateschitz who has put so much effort into the teams and into Formula One. It was a massive high. It was a monkey off our back to get the first pole, first win and a one-two. We have had great support from our partners. A quite good engine and I thank Flavio and Renault for that. It has just been a great week and the whole team in Milton Keynes have worked tremendously hard to achieve that result. We have just got to do it again now. We did not have long to enjoy it and we are focussed on the next one. Q. Flavio, it is a point that your engine won but not your chassis. What makes the difference? FB: The chassis. Q. And where in the chassis? What part of the performance? FB: Red Bull at this moment do a better job. We have no excuse. What we need is to improve the chassis and we have our first version of the diffuser which is not what we believe is the best but at least we have done something. In Barcelona we will have another step and I am sure in Monte Carlo we will have a big one. We started very late like everybody and we try to have the short cut and to be ready, at least in Monte Carlo, to be competitive and to fight for the podium and to win races. Q. How do you feel about the performance of the two drivers for the start of the season? FB: The problem is that in two races we were gambling and in the last race we made a mistake to call Fernando (Alonso) in too early. And this was our own mistake and after Fernando spun we did not finish in the points. With Piquet it is not possible to tell you he is happy as he is not. This is the first race that is normal if you want, with a normal situation, so let's see what happens. The performance of the team as well, we have not done well at all and it is quite frustrating. But we need to catch up. We need to catch up to Red Bull. Red Bull have the best car without a diffuser in the business at this moment and we need to catch quickly Brawn and all the hole people. We need to catch up these people. Q. Stefano, I don't know how to describe it but you have had an awful start to the season. SD: It is easy to say. It is not difficult, I would say. Q. What is the atmosphere within the team like? SD: Well, for sure we are not happy at all but that is the nature of the situation. It is obvious but what I can confirm to you is that all the people inside FIAT react to the negative start to the season with a positive attitude as that is the only way to do. If you go with the mistaken way of approaching things that have to do with emotions and with no rational idea it is even worse, so we understand the pressure is outside. It is part of the game and it is normal. But the only thing we have to do is work and react. We know that we have a lot of things to do in all the different areas and what I would say is disappointing is that for sure in the first three races, in the way that the situation has evolved, we should have taken some points even if we did not show the best package in terms of the car. That is the biggest disappointment that we have now. Q. Do you understand now the problems you had with the engine in China? SD: It was not a problem with the engine. You mean with Felipe (Massa)? Q. With Felipe and also Kimi (Raikkonen) was complaining of a lack of power. SD: Kimi was complaining as sometimes when you are behind, in that condition when you have a lot of water and rain coming in, you may have one or two laps when the engine is misfiring a bit but then it cleans up and it is fine. For Felipe it was a problem with the ECU, on the software side, that caused the engine to stop. QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR Q. (Chris Lines - Associated Press) Can I ask all three of you what you think of the proposals for a budget cap. The FIA wants you to come back with an answer. Have you come back to them yet? And do you think it can work and will be a good thing for Formula One? SD: What we can say is that we have replied to the President of the FIA as FOTA that our intention is to discuss, for sure, this item in our next meeting and we will come back to him as soon as we have had this meeting. You know it is a very strategic point for the future of all the teams and for the future of all the constructors, so we need to detail all the points that are connected to the budget cut. In all fairness I think that you should already know that we as Ferrari, we really don't like completely the approach of the budget cuts as we feel that there are a couple of things that need to be addressed, that are difficult to manage and police and it is important to make sure that certain things are pretty well covered. But at the end of the day we agree with the Federation that we need to cut down costs and this is a job that we have already started to do with FOTA and we need to make sure that we are addressing the point of the cost cutting shortly. The other point connected to the budget cut situation is that I don't see how we can pass from one year to the other with a massive reduction as we have to consider that the constructor, at least with our situation, has a lot of things that he is doing and it is not possible to go straight away to certain figures. Q. Christian CH: I think Stefano raised some very good points. I think the most important thing is to get costs down in Formula One. The idea of a budget cap for an independent team is appealing but again, it is what the number will be and the devil is always in the detail with these things. The last thing we want is for the championship to be decided by accountants. It is important that we discuss it thoroughly within the association and work closely with the FIA on it but the crucial aspect is that we absolutely need to reduce costs. Q. Flavio? FB: Again the same line. We need to have a target for 2010, 2011, 2012. It is very difficult to cut it dramatically in one year but I am sure we are arriving in 2012 with the number that everybody will be happy. Again, like Ferrari for me the budget cut is very difficult to put in place. I believe what we need to do is have a clear rule like wind tunnel, like CFD, etc. as then the costs start from the beginning to the development of the car and to be sure the rule is black and white and everybody understands. If you are framing the rule, in a very tight frame, afterwards maybe it is possible to put the cut as well. But cut or whatever solution we find, it needs to be a dramatic and drastic reduction of the costs. With this we agree with the Federation and with Max Mosley and with everybody. This is what we are doing. But again, it is very difficult to do in one year. We need to have a target and after that we will work together with the Federation to achieve to control this target. But you know it is something we will have to see in what way we control this budget and in a way we have the rule for the future but it is not only 2012 as in 2012 the work is not finished. We will have to look at 2014, 2015 but it is absolutely mandatory to have a big cut with the budget and to arrive at least with a budget ... (becomes inaudible). This is what we are talking about and I think everybody agrees that we have a human team around a human number and we need to work with FOTA and with the Federation to achieve that. Q. (Jonathan Legard - BBC) Flavio, how much confidence do you have in Nelson Piquet to perform as you want and as the team would like? FB: This question is not really a great question. But you see the performance as well, everybody is watching TV, including me, and it is what you see. What can I say. It is a difficult moment for him and we need to support him and the situation is like everybody sees, difficult for him and in a moment like this you don't kill anybody. What you need is to support and hope he will get better. But like I said before this is the first race with the normal situation and let's see. Sunday or Monday maybe we have a different idea, I hope a better idea, of what is going on. Q. (Bill Johnson - The National) Christian, you mention the monkey of the proverbial back. How important is it that you cement that first victory with another fairly soon? CH: I think our performances in the first two races have been very encouraging, even before the China result we had qualified in the top three in Melbourne and in Malaysia. We were unlucky not to get a podium in Melbourne, so the performance of the car had already been there. We knew through winter testing that we had a very good package. The challenge for us is to maintain the momentum against the bigger teams and keep the level of development which is going to be a big challenge but everybody is focussed on that back in the UK. The encouraging thing for us is that we know that we have performance still to come from the underbody of the car now that the regulations are clear regarding diffusers, so we have got that step to look forward to. But now the team is obviously very, very focussed on building what we have achieved. There is still a long way to go in the championship and these guys aren't going to be hanging around. They are going to be coming back very soon. Q. (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport) I would like a clarification from Stefano on what we read on the web sites this morning about the answer that you made on Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher. Could you clarify exactly what you said to our British colleagues? SD: I was just answering to a point that was some comment about the situation that we are in at the moment in Ferrari, that we are all Italians leading the team and I said that on my side it's pretty clear, if you look back, that's not the case, so that was the reason why I asked that to reply in this way is the usual thing that is leading nowhere. With regard to Michael, I said that for sure, he's part of our team, he's working hard with the same rules that he was last year, very close to the team, and I didn't say anything negative on that subject at all. Q. (James Allen - Financial Times) Flavio, you're in the process of looking for a new title sponsor for next year. How does talk of a budget cap affect that and if a budget cap does come in, does it bring down the rate card for that kind of thing? FB: If the budget does come, it comes from everybody. I don't think it's only coming for Renault. We are in a situation, we are cutting a lot of tests and what we need to do very quickly is to tackle the aerodynamics because if you look at the engine, I believe the engine now represents eight to ten percent of the total budget. Beforehand everybody was talking about engines. Now I believe that we are pretty much OK on engines. |
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The cost of engines is really, really minimal with respect to the total budget. Again, everybody forgets that we need to tackle aerodynamics, as we promised Max. We tried to work on the budgets of aerodynamics but it was impossible. Our people came back and said it was very difficult. When you make a rule about the number of hours in the wind tunnel, numbers of teraflops in cfd, it's what we need to do, and afterwards the budget would go down for Renault but if you have rules it would go down for everybody not just for Renault. I don't see just Renault effective about cutting the budget. Q. (Alan Baldwin - Reuters) Flavio, on the question of budget cuts and reducing costs, there was a report in the Italian press that you yourself had taken a salary cut of twenty percent. Is that true and have you also asked your drivers to take pay cuts? FB: I don't want to discuss about somebody who is not here. We are cutting the costs across the whole team, not only my salary but the top people: myself, Bob Bell and Pat Symonds have taken a cut of twenty percent. The second level have taken a cut of ten percent and everybody else has taken a cut of five percent. Q. (Anne Giuntini - L'Equipe) Regarding cost reductions, Flavio, I've been told by several people who were attending some technical working group at the very beginning of the season that Ross Brawn, for example, made some proposals for reducing costs in aerodynamics quite quickly and the principal person who protested and asked to continue was one of your team, Pat Symonds. How can you explain that logic when you are always pushing for cost reduction? FB: We started discussions about cost reduction many years ago when we were Benetton and I don't know who was in the meeting but somebody tells you, but I don't know, I never have the feeling that we have stopped pursuing cost reduction. I think that includes Ferrari as well and also Red Bull. I believe the first teams to be very aggressive about cost reduction were Renault and Ferrari together. I don't see Ross Brawn with 1200 people looking for cost reductions. Maybe we are talking about something else. I don't see this aggression at Honda last year regarding cost cutting, even though they have thirty or forty percent more people than us. I don't see this aggression from Ross Brawn. I saw that nothing happened at this moment. We had the meeting on the sixth when we just told everybody that we needed to move very quickly on aerodynamics because the engine looks like it's pretty much under control but I didn't see Renault trying to stop cost reduction. Domenicali will confirm this. Last year we started with Rory (Byrne) and Pat Symonds doing a presentation for cost cutting and Red Bull was there as well. We're all working together and I've never seen Pat Symonds stop or Ross trying to cut costs. Sometimes it seems the opposite. Q. (Anne Giuntini - L'Equipe) Why does it take so long to reduce costs on the aero side? FB: Reducing costs it quite complicated because at one point I believe at FOTA we were looking for a unanimous agreement because I think it was a process we wanted to do together. The three teams you see here were really pushing for a very aggressive reduction of costs and some teams that are not here today were not part of the unanimous agreement. What we are doing now is just using a 70 per cent agreement in FOTA and I promise we will go very quickly. SD: If I may add something, the difficulties on that is that starting from the fact that all the teams have different structures, all the teams have made different investments in the past and to find unanimity when you have to really reconsider the strategic decisions that you have made in the past is not always easy, that's for sure. CH: And you end with a compromise position to accommodate everybody. For example, it doesn't save us, it costs us money to meet the lines. I think FOTA is going to need to be more aggressive in that area. Q. (Joris Fioriti - AFP) I have a question for Stefano on a sporting level. Your performances went up down today, can you tell us what is the real level of your cars according to you? SD: I'm glad that we're going up and not only down. No, I'm joking. For sure what we have done today is to prepare us as much as we can for the race. What we have done today is really mainly to test, to make a comparison between the two cars that are different solutions, one with KERS and the other without. And then try to see how the tyres are behaving in the two different conditions in race simulation, so that was the main activity of today and now our engineers will try to do the best evaluation to decide on the cars for tomorrow. We know that in terms of performance, the cars have not changed since a week ago, so we need to do the maximum from what we have now. Q. (Giorgio Terruzzi - RTI) It's clear how strong Mr Mosley is. I want to know your feeling on how strong FOTA can or will be, thinking about what happened at your last meeting and today? FB: This is not a question of the championship or a strong one. FOTA and the Federation are working together, this is absolutely sure. It's not a question of demonstrating who has more power, the question is to work together to achieve the target. There's no question. Sure, Max is pushing very hard and we need to react but as Christian said before, and to answer your question, when we are talking about the complexity of the teams, somebody in the three or four years is investing in different wind tunnels for example, somebody investing in cfd. You don't want to penalise somebody because they make different investments but FOTA is together. We have a chairman in Luca (di Montezemolo) and we have a process to go through with 70 per cent of the vote. It's very difficult to be unanimous, we know that. We try very hard to have that at least with issues that are important but for the good of Formula One, it's fundamental that the teams and Mr Mosley work together. We see already in 2009 nobody tells us that we are cutting the costs already, substantially. I think the teams and the federation really need to work together because in the end the rules determine the cost of your budget. An example is the diffuser. The diffuser will arrive in Barcelona. This is a rule that determines a cost for us. KERS, when we started KERS, nobody knew how much KERS would cost. Now we have KERS and maybe we use it for another one or two races, if everything goes well. We need to be very, very careful when we change the rules to see the consequences because every time you don't have stability it costs you but as Christian said, sometimes you spend more. you try to change something, we need to be very careful about this. We need the teams and the Federation to work together to achieve what everybody wants, to make Formula One a centre for profit not a centre for costs. This is possible, it's very possible to have this in the future. CH: I think Flavio has summed it up very well. In Formula One you have three important parties: you've got the teams that are now working within FOTA, you've got the FIA and you've got the commercial rights holder and especially in challenging economic times it needs all three parties to work together very carefully and very closely. I think a lot of good work has already been done through FOTA working with the FIA, with cost reductions that we've already seen so far for this year. The engine cost reductions, the testing reductions just to name a couple, but it's important to keep going because we've only just started and I think that the next couple of months are going to be crucial to really safeguard the future of Formula One, not just for 2010 but for the next five years. SD: Well, I think we should think of how many things have changed over the last year. If you look back, even if you look back even further, you see many times we have had to change the lines on what we wanted to do. For sure, this is not helping the situation. I know that we need to be pro-active and react to the general situation that we have, that's for sure, but we don't have to overreact when we change something. I think that this year's situation - and I said that taking aside for one second our situation on performance, because it's pretty clear otherwise to say 'listen, you have to take care of that.' that's another story - what is not good in this situation is that we have too many things that are different from car to car and from team to team and it's difficult from the outside to understand that we are doing the same championship and this is one fundamental point that we have to avoid for the future. I think on that, both the FIA and FOM and the teams should make sure that this is not going to happen in the future. We need to have stability, we need to have the same profile for everyone. Q. (Andrea Cremonesi - La Gazzetta dello Sport) Stefano, are you changing the strategy on KERS? As Flavio said before, we will approach the use of KERS race by race. The second question is about the next Grand Prix. It could be the break point of the season for you. What are the criteria you will use to say 'OK, we will switch to next season?' SD: The first question, the answer is yes, we are going to evaluate the situation and this is the reason why we are already starting some analysis on the performance of KERS. As I said, our project was born around KERS and it is very difficult to change the complete car, thinking that KERS is not there, so we need to find the best compromise. Second question: for sure it's a very important Grand Prix. We know that we have done the maximum that we can in order to anticipate everything that we can but I do want to say that there will be a break point because we will not give up, we need to push up to the moment where really, mathematically it's impossible because it is not the nature of the way that we normally work. We know that all our competitors are working flat out and we will see. The only thing that will be different is really now the rate of development. If we have a different slope with a higher corner, maybe we can catch up. If we are slower, for sure it will be very difficult. Q. (Jonathan Legard - BBC) Question to all of you: the MotoGP recently had to be postponed by one day because of adverse weather. People keep talking about sand storms and so on. How should Formula One react on Sunday if the race could not take place? Do you want to go home or should we hang around until Monday? SD: I will push not to run and wait, to postpone, maybe to the end of the season, close to Abu Dhabi. Maybe we could be more competitive. CH: We were very good in the wet, so maybe we would be alright in the sand. Hopefully the weather forecast looks OK, I think the wind will get up a bit, maybe during tomorrow but the latest forecast that we had looked OK for Sunday, so I don't think it will be a problem. FB: We don't care. Anything after Abu Dhabi. We are here already. We are preparing the car tonight for the sand on Sunday. Whatever happens happens. I believe in China it was already tragic with the weather situation. Let's see what happens. |
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Ferrari |
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Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro was back on track today for the Bahrain Grand Prix free practice, at a circuit where it carried out two winter test sessions in preparation for the season. In conditions very different to those experienced last February, the team worked solely on race preparation, both in terms of assessing the performance of the Bridgestone tyres and in a comparison of two different configurations on the F60. "Our car is unchanged from the way it was in Shanghai and therefore, we couldn't expect a different picture," commented Stefano Domenicali. "Our aim is to bring home some points: we have to be realistic and at the moment, we cannot aspire to more than that. We have to tackle this difficult phase with a cool head, working on all fronts to try and get back to being competitive as soon as possible." Felipe Massa: "This was definitely not a good day. We worked a lot towards the race, but we have to try and improve the handling of the car to move up the order for tomorrow and Sunday. The harder tyre is very difficult to use, while the soft one seems to be the best, not just in terms of outright performance but also over a distance. The KERS helps: without it, I would have certainly been slower. I made a mistake at the final turn on my last set of soft tyres, which cost me at least three tenths. We must be patient at the moment and try to do the best possible in these conditions." Kimi Raikkonen: "Even if we don't know what fuel loads the other teams had, it's clear that we are not as quick as we would like, but we have to try and make the best of this situation. Anyway, we knew that the picture for this race would be no different to what we've seen in previous ones. Today we opted to run in two different configurations and did a lot of work on finding the best set-up for the car. We collected a lot of data which we will now analyse, to be as well prepared as possible for the race. We can expect a difficult weekend, but we were never in any doubt about that." Chris Dyer: "Today, we had a very full work programme, based mainly on race preparation and on a comparison between the two cars that ran in different configurations: Felipe's was fitted with KERS, while Kimi's was not. We acquired a load of data which we will now evaluate very carefully before taking any definite decisions regarding the rest of the weekend. Today's conditions were very difficult, with high temperatures. We struggled a lot with the harder tyres, while the softer ones worked better. We had no reliability problems, which is the most positive aspect of the day. As for performance, we have a lot of work to do to try and improve it, while well aware of our current potential." |
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Williams |
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Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:34.227, 4th; P2 - 1:33.339, 1st “You can only ever compare your performance to other race weekends so, relatively, I think we are looking ok. We’ve done a lot of set-up work today and I am quite happy with everything so we’ve made good progress. The team brought some new parts to Bahrain and they seem to be working well so thanks to our aero guys for their continuing hard work in developing the car. I am really convinced that we will be able to do something positive at this race and to get the points that the car is worth.” Kazuki Nakajima, P1 - 1:34.880, 11th; P2 - 1:33.899, 10th “Today didn’t go too badly but we are lacking some pace compared to Nico. I’ll now de-brief with my engineers to try to find out where I’m losing that time so I can make it up in tomorrow’s qualifying. The circuit is getting better and better the more laps we do, which is good. It’s also really hot out there, but fortunately it’s bearable.” |
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McLaren |
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Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:33.647, 1st; P2 - 1:33.994, 11th “We’ve definitely got a very well-balanced car around here. The track felt very grippy from the start of the session and our work on the prime tyre was very consistent. Both sessions were consistent and very productive. The whole field looks very tight, but we are definitely taking steps forward. While we haven’t made significant progress - we didn’t bring anything new here this weekend - our goal remains to score some more points.” Heikki Kovalainen, P1 - 1:34.502, 6th; P2 - 1:34.764, 19th “The track was surprisingly grippy at the start of practice, but the pitlane was quite dusty and slippery, making it easy to lock wheels. I feel more comfortable with the older-spec front wing, but maybe we still need to evaluate it. We once again made progress and have made improvements to the car since Shanghai. The big stops and long straights of this circuit really suit our package. My KERS stopped towards the end of the final session, which meant my times weren’t as competitive as they could have been. But I definitely think we’ll be more competitive in qualifying.” Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal: “We are satisfied with the progress we made today. Given MP4-24’s performance deficit, we run these sessions with considerable discipline to ensure that the improvements we make to the car are very rigorously tested in the field. Our times in first practice were a little flattering but our afternoon programme was encouraging. Having only raced in Shanghai last week, we don’t have too many upgrades for the car, but we have succeeded in finding a decent balance for MP4-24 and that certainly gives us a good foundation for the rest of the weekend.” Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport: “This was a productive first day and we did a lot of running posting reasonably quick and, more importantly, consistent laptimes. The order in the afternoon reflects, in my view, not the right picture here as was equally the case with Lewis’s P1 in first practice. Our KERS is helping quite a bit around this circuit and our plan is to use it here tomorrow and on Sunday - being the only team to do so with both cars in all the races so far.” |
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Red Bull |
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Sebastian Vettel, P1 - 1:34.938, 12th; P2 - 1:33.661, 4th "So, obviously it’s back to normal now. Last weekend was fantastic, but we have to carry on as there’s a lot of work to do! So, our minds are now set to focus on Bahrain. It was a normal Friday, we were more or less able to do our full programme and had no issues with the car. Performance wise, it’s difficult to comment, but the car feels alright. We were struggling to find a good balance this morning, but it was better this afternoon. Now we have to look at the data and try to improve for tomorrow. I think everyone was surprised how hot it is when you leave the pits in the car, it’s like someone’s blowing a heat gun in your face. It’s better with the visor closed than open, otherwise you just get more hot air blowing at you.” Mark Webber, P1 - 1:34.827, 9th; P2 - 1:33.676, 5th “It’s obviously different conditions here, compared to when we drove on Sunday in Shanghai. We have very dry conditions and, as usual, Bahrain throws up its challenge with car balance. We had a productive Friday, running on both tyres and the car ran faultlessly. In terms of pace it’s always hard to say who’s where on Friday - but hopefully we’re in good shape again to get some good results on Sunday.” |
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Brawn GP |
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Jenson Button, P1 - 1:34.434, 5th; P2 - 1:33.694, 6th “A pretty standard programme for us today on what has been a very hot Friday in Bahrain. We have successfully completed our scheduled test items and evaluated a number of set-up options to find the best balance for our car around this track. The heat is intense however we are well prepared for this and looking forward to the novelty of a dry race weekend. The pace looks good from our initial evaluations and I am sure it will be a closely fought battle in qualifying tomorrow." Rubens Barrichello, P1 - 1:34.531, 7th; P2 - 1:33.885, 9th "We had different set-ups running on both cars today to gather as much information as possible and compensate for our lack of testing before the season began. It's very hot here in Bahrain obviously and it was quite difficult to find a good balance today but overall I am comfortable with the work that we have achieved. We are running quite competitively but have further work to do before qualifying tomorrow as other cars around us were also quick." Ross Brawn, Brawn team principal: "Whilst the super soft and medium tyre compounds that we are using for the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend are familiar to us, the unique conditions found at this circuit mean that they are working in a very different range. The track is always very dusty at the start of each session and the track temperatures today are by far the highest that we have experienced this year. We have therefore focused our efforts on understanding the behaviour of the tyres and are happy with the progress made through the two practice sessions. The intense heat here ensures that on-car temperatures are closely monitored and although we do not have any concerns, it will be a challenging weekend for the drivers." |
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Renault |
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Fernando Alonso, P1 - 1:35.348, 18th; P2 - 1:33.530, 2nd “We had very hot track and ambient conditions today - even hotter than we had in Malaysia. We therefore concentrated on evaluating the brake cooling for race conditions and also compared the tyre compounds to make sure that the tyres work well in these temperatures. We're happy with the work we have done today and managed to complete our programme." Nelson Piquet, P1 - 1:34.974, 13th; P2 - 1:34.411, 15th "I've had a solid start to the weekend and ran with the new diffuser for the first timetoday, although it's difficult to know how much extra performance it gives the car. I think we still need to improve the car in the final practice session tomorrow, but we managed to get some good data today. I hope I can have a strong qualifying session tomorrow, but I think it will be tough to reach the top ten shootout." Pat Symonds, Renault executive director of engineering: "The Bahrain circuit is our first hard braking circuit of the year and ranks among the hardest for the total braking system. In view of this, we spent a lot more time today on heavier than normal fuel loads, concentrating on our set-up for Sunday. Later in the session, we seemed to get some competitive times out of the car. As always on a Friday, the timesheet is not a complete reflection of competitiveness, but we are confident that we have moved the car forward since the beginning of the year." |
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Toyota |
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Jarno Trulli, P1 - 1:35.036, 15th; P2 - 1:33.616, 3rd “We collected a lot of data here during our winter tests at this circuit but the conditions today were very different. So we had to change some of our set-up in order to suit the car to these temperatures, which are much hotter. There is also quite a lot more sliding around than we had in the winter but I guess that's the same for everyone. We spent the day going through our usual programme of tyre testing and set-up work. We still need to find a bit more driveability in the car but it's not a bad start to the weekend." Timo Glock, P1 - 1:35.333, 17th; P2 - 1:33.764, 8th "During our winter tests at this circuit we had a good, consistent pace but so far today I've found the car quite hard to drive. The lap times aren't bad but I've been struggling for balance. So we'll have to work overnight to sort out our direction for tomorrow and to get the car back to where it should be. If we can do that then I'm sure we can keep up our strong start to the year." Dieter Gass, Toyota chief engineer race and test: "Today was a very good day for us overall. Even though we mainly had fine conditions during winter testing here, there is still a significant difference in temperature. So we had to reassess some of the items we had already tried. We have some updates in aerodynamics and brake cooling here and we ran through our programme without issues. The tyre behaviour certainly seems less critical than in the last few races. So this is a very good baseline for another strong showing on Sunday." |
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Force India |
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Adrian Sutil, P1 - 1:35.021, 14th; P2 - 1:33.763, 7th “The second session was quite a bit better as the track was very dirty and sandy in the morning. We also tried the softer tyre that seemed to help a lot with the stability. It's quite good balance-wise for a Friday, we can still tweak the general set-up and we still have to look at the brakes as I'm not 100% comfortable right now. I think the update package has helped us - if I look at my position in the afternoon, I think it is the best position I have been in ever on a Friday. Although it's difficult to draw conclusions from this, the car feels good so let's see how we go tomorrow.” Giancarlo Fisichella, P1 - 1:35.042, 16th; P2 - 1:34.025, 12th “Today I am happier and more comfortable with the car: it feels like we have made a step forward with the new updates. The car is more consistent and I think we have reduced the gap to the others but let's see tomorrow. The team did a fantastic job to have this package here and I look forward to tomorrow to seeing where we are on the grid.” Dominic Harlow, Force India chief race engineer: “Today's practice sessions were two of the hottest we've run for quite some time. As expected the circuit grip was initially low but the drivers coped quite well and got to grips with their programmes. Giancarlo looked at some set-up options and Adrian concentrated on the tyres in what was all together a productive day. The updates to the car appear to be working as expected and we are hopeful for a stronger qualifying tomorrow. |
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Toro Rosso |
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Sebastien Bourdais, P1 - 1:35.353, 19th; P2 - 1:34.366, 14th “The track has changed a lot from the morning to the afternoon session and that has made it difficult to assess the two types of tyre. It seems that the difference in behaviour between the Prime and the Option is very much related to the track temperature increase. Therefore, this afternoon it was difficult to assess the effect of changes we made to the car as the conditions changed. But as always on a Friday, it is nearly impossible to evaluate where you are compared to the others, until qualifying. 13th and 14th is not where we want to be tomorrow, but we will work hard now and then see what happens.” Sebastien Buemi, P1 - 1:35.369, 20th; P2 - 1:34.127, 13th “I think these high temperatures will make life difficult for everyone, but we are making sure we are as well prepared as possible to deal with the heat. At the moment, I feel good in the car although we still need to work to improve, even though it is difficult to say what our lap times mean, as we don’t know what fuel loads the others were running. I am happy with the car, even if it can always be better, as I lacked traction coming out of the slow corners and occasionally, I locked the front wheels under braking.” |
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BMW Sauber |
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Nick Heidfeld, P1 - 1:33.907, 2nd; P2 - 1:34.790, 20th “Obviously we looked better in the morning session than we did in the afternoon. The difference in the balance with the softer option tyres compared to the harder prime tyres is quite big here, which makes it really difficult to set-up the car. I also had a lack of brake stability and the track didn’t have much grip, but this is rather normal on a Friday in Bahrain. We will now look into all the data and see what we will do tomorrow.” Robert Kubica, P1 - 1:33.938, 3rd; P2 - 1:34.605, 17th “It was a usual Friday for us. We compared the tyre compounds and worked on the car balance. Additionally we worked on the KERS set-up, which is challenging as the temperatures here are quite high. We will now analyse the data and try to improve for tomorrow.” Willy Rampf, BMW Sauber head of engineering: “We completed our Friday programme without any problems. As usual we concentrated on race preparation, the tyre comparisons and adapting to the KERS. The data will now we analysed. Last year the field was covered by 4.3 seconds, today it was only 1.4 seconds! So we can assume it will be a very close qualifying tomorrow.” |
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