Italian GP - Monza - Friday
TEAM PRINCIPALS: Ross BRAWN (Brawn GP), Aldo COSTA (Ferrari), Vijay MALLYA (Force India), Franz TOST (Toro Rosso)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: The regulations this year seem to have been very difficult to interpret. How much do you understand about the regulations and looking forward to next year as well? Ross?
Ross BRAWN: If we knew the answer to that we would not be up and down as we are. I think what happens, particularly with a new set of regulations, is that you focus on one area of performance and that is the best average over the season. You pick a downforce level, you pick a drag level and you develop the car around that target. Sometimes when you move away to circuits like Spa or here where you move into a completely different wing regime, then different factors can become prominent. I think that is what's happening. I think also the tyres, we are still not all understanding the tyres yet. I think that is adding to the challenge. These slick tyres we still don't fully understand and why we get them to work at some tracks and not the other is something certainly we have to fix and we are working on solutions for next year but it may take a year or two before we fully understand how the slick tyres are working. But I do know that some of my colleagues, who have been quick at some races and slow at the others, are just as puzzled by the conundrum, so the one that unlocks it the earliest will be the one who has the advantages.
Q: Aldo, your feelings about that?
Aldo COSTA: On top of what Ross said everybody started with a brand new rule from the aerodynamic point of view. The development pace during the season is quite strong for everybody, so the results are also changing because you see cars that in a specific race use an upgraded package and that can make a big difference compared to other cars. This evolution of packages between the cars are making the results a bit more floating than usual.
Q: Vijay, your feelings about this? It has affected you very much in the last couple of races?
Vijay MALLYA: When we started the season I was told by my technical team that they were not clear about the diffuser. What I understand is that we designed the car with the possibility of having a diffuser should the rule get clarified, so we were able to introduce very quickly an interim diffuser in Bahrain and then develop upon it. We always planned to have a significant aero upgrade for Valencia which we introduced and then following on from there for Spa and for Monza and that seems to be working well for us. The car is quick and competitive but if we had started off with more clarity at the beginning of the year, maybe we would have done things differently, maybe not. But going forward into 2010 I hope that there will be clarity up front, so that everybody knows what they are doing and there won't be many surprises.
Q: Franz?
Franz TOST: I think there are two main reasons. The first is the KERS system because teams that decided to run the KERS system had another philosophy how to design the car than teams not running the KERS system and this was a great influence for the aerodynamics. The second reason for me is the diffuser as this changed the design philosophy, especially the rear of the car. Then during the season some teams decided to stop running KERS which means you have to change the design of the car and all the teams decided to run with a double diffuser which means you also have to design completely the rear part of the car. As we cannot do any tests anymore we are coming to the race tracks and it is really difficult to set up the car in the correct way. Apart from this all the teams are very close together. If you make a small mistake setting up the car or if the driver makes a small mistake you can be three, four or five positions behind because in the past in qualifying there are five or six cars between one-tenth-of-a-second. I think this performance has never been as strong in Formula One as now.
Q: Ross, you have two winning drivers. Also a slight lack of performance over the last few races. How confident are you of improving that now?
RB: We did not have a good race in Spa but we won the one before that. They are both free to race. We feel that is what will take the team forward in a stronger way than having any team orders. They are both free to race and both free to try and win the championship. I think Jenson (Button) has had two races where it hasn't worked for him. I think the last race he obviously had the incident and Valencia wasn't great, but the previous races really the car was not working as well as we wanted, so I don't think you can really lay those races at Jenson's door. He has had a couple of average races and I think over the season if a guy has a couple of average races as well as all the good ones, he has had a fantastic season. I am pretty optimistic that he is going to have a strong run to the end of the season. The car seems okay here. I think you are quite right in saying that the time gap is quite narrow and I think there are other teams that have perhaps focussed on the race and others who focus more on making sure that they get through qualifying as strong as possible. I think until we get into qualifying we won't really know the situation. We are reasonably happy with our car this weekend. It seems to be working okay and I see every reason why we should have a decent race here.
Q: It was interesting in Spa, particularly in qualifying, that Jenson seemed to be unhappy with the softer tyre whereas Rubens (Barrichello) seemed to be happy on the softer tyre?
RB: A little bit, yes. I don't think Jenson found the balance as nice on that tyre. But when the tyres are so close - as these tyres are only one step apart – I think you often find that one driver will prefer one to the other. Today I would struggle to tell you which tyre we are going to race because the tyres seem pretty similar, so it may well be that one driver will prefer one tyre to another. But that is not unusual for one driver to prefer another tyre and probably on reflection we should have stuck with the prime tyre with Jenson throughout qualifying but we didn't and he wasn't comfortable.
Q: Aldo, how did Giancarlo (Fisichella) get on today?
AC: He had to learn quite a lot. Even if the formula is the same and the tyre is the same, two cars may have different behaviour. Two teams definitely have got different procedures, different systems on the car, so it was for him a very good learning day and we are quite pleased about what he did and we are looking forward to tomorrow to see the result.
Q: We heard recently that you have stopped development on the car. How much have you had new developments specifically for here?
AC: Yes, we are concentrating mainly on next year's car. Obviously, you need a specific development for Monza and I have to say that there are other parts of the car which were already in the pipeline and landed already here in Monza for the first time. But from now on there will not be a lot of development on the car.
Q: Vijay, can I ask you about how things developed regarding the transfer of Giancarlo to Ferrari?
VM: Well, it's pretty simple. Giancarlo came to me and said that it was the dream of every Italian to drive for Ferrari and he had this unique opportunity which would fulfil a lifelong ambition at the end of his career. I said 'alright, if that's what you want, and that's what makes you happy, go,' because I really honestly feel that if I stood in his way and waved a contract at him and said 'no, I insist that you stay with us' he might have been completely demotivated. So I had Tonio Liuzzi as our contracted reserve driver and he's hungry, he's motivated, wants to do the job, so I said 'let's give him a chance.'
Q: So what does Tonio have to do to stay in the team? Is he OK for the next five races...
VM: Absolutely, he's OK for the next five races and maybe even beyond. He knows that he needs to perform as well. We've done all we can to produce a car that's now getting competitive and as the driver, he also has to deliver his part of it and he knows that. This game is unpredictable in more ways than one and there aren't any guarantees attached to either a car or a driver. But I think I would say that I'm quite happy and quite optimistic that the cars will go well and both drivers will do well.
Q: Franz, one thing that you're having to do at the moment, I suspect, is build up your technical team and facilities because obviously you have to design and build the car next year. How is that going, what does it involve?
FT: It's going quite well, I must say. We are building up the engineering team around our technical director Giorgio Ascanelli. We have a chief designer, Ben Butler, and so far they have already started on next year's car. We are running the wind tunnel in England, at Bicester, and also our CFD department is increasing and so far are we are within our planned schedule.
Q: And in terms of drivers, are you thinking that you will keep those two for next year?
FT: In the end it's the decision of Red Bull but it wouldn't have made sense to bring both young drivers into the team if you didn't continue with them for next year, because I must say that they have both improved their performances from race weekend to race weekend and I'm convinced that Red Bull and Toro Rosso can reap the fruits from the middle of next year onwards and especially in 2011 and we are happy with the drivers.
Q: One final question to you all: it's been interesting that there have been some changes to the first and second chicanes. We saw one team still going over the kerbs; has there been a decision within your teams to kerb or not to kerb, for example in those first two chicanes, and what are your feelings about them?
RB: We weren't aware of the kerb change until we got here. We'd actually done quite a lot of work on configuring the car on the basis of last year's kerbs, so it was a little surprise when we heard about the kerbs being changed. We're not using them to any great degree; the first corrugated bit is easily useable, the mound, the hump, is more difficult to use and our drivers find it unsettles the car too much. A race track is a race track and once you get into having to develop your cars to leap over concrete mounds to get the best lap time, it's not much fun. I'd rather the cars stayed predominantly on the tarmac and we worked on that basis.
AC: We have seen what happened during the testing today, there are cars which are much more aggressive on these kerbs. I have to say that the cars this year are a bit more vulnerable in some areas like the front wings, for example, so you need to be quite careful jumping in such a big way. Yeah, we are thinking what to do, respecting, of course, what they tell us to do. Personally, I agree with Ross. I don't like motor racing going over barriers. I like cars staying on the track, but if there is a lap time, we have to do our best for the interpretation of this kerbing.
VM: Well, I remember last year when we were basically racing the Spyker B chassis that the car used to struggle immensely over the kerbs and get completely unsettled, so I know, for a fact, that the 2009 car was designed with kerbs in mind, but I don't believe that either of our drivers used the kerbs successfully today.
FT: Buemi used the kerbs a couple of times, but he said the car was very unstable and he had the feeling that he lost time. Therefore we will analyse the data and see what we do tomorrow.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Ian Parkes – The Press Association) Ross, quite a few respected people – Felipe Massa, Nigel Mansell, Stirling Moss – have remarked on Jenson's mental state over the past couple of weeks, that perhaps he's a man now under pressure given the position he's in in the championship. I'm just wondering whether you've noticed any particular difference in him, in his character, his mentality, in particular since the start of the season when everything was easier and he was winning races?
RB: Well, I think there's naturally been a change, because he's now leading the World Championship which I don't think he's done before, and that's a new experience for him. Undoubtedly that does influence your everyday thinking. When you're a driver who turns up to every race and if you can do well it's great but if you don't, so what: that's different to building a championship year and I've seen it in every driver I've worked with that if you're in a year when you don't have a chance to win the championship, the drivers try as hard, they're just as committed but it has a different flavour, a difficult character to when you're having to build points, even in different situations. So I do see a change in Jenson, but I see it as a positive change, I see it as something where he's diligently thinking about how he puts together a championship year, and how he works on trying to maintain his position. But I don't see anything negative in his approach or his attitude, and just to repeat, I've been fortunate enough to experience this many times and even with Michael (Schumacher), who did it seven times, the seventh time was just as tense as the first time. Yeah, sometimes being out in front in a championship is the most difficult position, because the cars behind have a lot to lose. The guy in the front is the one who has everything to lose and it's the same with a motor race: when you're leading the motor race, it's more difficult than the guy who's behind, who's trying to have a go and can maybe be a bit more adventurous in his strategy or his driving. That's the way it is. It's ten years since Jenson fought for a championship or more, so he's having to re-engage his thoughts on fighting for a World Championship and what I see is perfectly normal and I don't see anything negative about it for sure.
Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Ross, there have been a lot of reports out of Germany in the last week about Mercedes buying a stake in the team. Could you comment on that?
RB: We've got our plans in place for next year and we're happy with where the team's going. I'm not going to comment on our specific plans, they'll all be announced in due course: drivers, sponsors, so we're very comfortable with where we're going to be next year. That's as much as I would like to say.
Q: (Eliahu Ayldiz – Sports Channel, Israel) About half an hour ago, Kimi (Raikkonen) said that even though he's quite happy with the car, he said that the Ferrari has had the same problem for the last few years here. Could you be more specific about why the car is not quick enough at Monza?
AC: To be honest, I didn't listen to his comments. Yeah, there are cars that perform better or worse on a whole range of circuits, depending on the basic choices that you have made in designing your car. Normally, when we design the car, we try to design the car for the circuits which are more frequent during the championship, so sometimes on the extremely different circuits we would suffer in terms of performance. This is our philosophy really, which has gone very well in the last few years. This year, for some specific problems, maybe the double diffuser at the beginning, it's not so evident. I think that if you invest a lot of time, a lot of money in designing a car for a specific circuit - all of us work with a fixed amount of money and a fixed amount of resources – you will not reach the optimum results that you can reach, on the contrary, being more focussed on the races which are more frequent during the championship. I know the driver may be pointing out this element but it's part of the philosophy of the team.
Bridgestone’s soft tyre proved to be the fastest rubber at the high speed and historic motor sports destination of Monza for the first day of the Italian Grand Prix. Under glorious blue skies Force India driver Adrian Sutil set a 1min 23.924secs time in the afternoon practice session.
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was the fastest in the morning session, using the medium compound to set a time of 1min 23.936secs. In this session only Giancarlo Fisichella in his Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro debut made use of the soft compound tyre, with all other competitors only using the medium compound.
Q&A with Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development
What was significant about today’s running?
“Today was interesting as this was the first time that we have run in Monza this season. Historically, there would be a test here before the race weekend, so today was the first time that the teams have used their special low drag and lower downforce Monza configurations. Additionally, the revised kerbs have changed the nature of the lap, so this was another factor to consider today. Despite this, lap times were once more very close, with the top twelve cars this afternoon separated by a second.”
How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
“It is still too early for us to make strong predictions. The track is still improving and there were many different chassis set-ups and aerodynamic configurations used today which makes tyre comparison difficult. What we can say is that both compounds have worked well today. We haven’t seen any graining and there were no other particular tyre issues. As the times are so close the smallest mistake by a driver or in car set-up will make a big difference in qualifying tomorrow.”
First session
G. Fisichella: 8° 1.24.732, 24 Laps, Chassis 280
K. Raikkonen: 10° 1.24.761, 26 Laps, Chassis 279
Second session
G. Fisichella: 20° 1.25.543, 36 Laps, Chassis 280
K. Raikkonen: 8° 1.24.796, 39 Laps, Chassis 279
Weather
First session: air 23/25 °C, track 30/35 °C; sunny.
Second session: air 28/29 °C, track 38 °C; sunny.
The results are difficult to interpret on this first day of free practice for the Italian Grand Prix, marked by Fisichella’s debut at the wheel of a Ferrari. “First of all, I want to welcome Giancarlo, who today was finally able to drive the F60, after eight days of theoretical work with the engineers,” said Stefano Domenicali. “Obviously, the team adopted a different approach to its work on the two cars: Kimi concentrated on race preparation, while Giancarlo worked on getting confident in the car. We completed a lot of kilometres which means we have plenty of data to analyse over the rest of the day. It’s hard to know where we are compared to the others: the gaps are very small and ten kilos of fuel more or less can translate into a significant step up the order.”
Kimi Raikkonen: “Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with the way things went in these three hours of free practice and the initial impressions are good. There is still room to improve the handling of the car, which we hope to do in tomorrow morning’s free practice. The new kerbs don’t allow you to cut them with impunity, which is not a bad thing given the difficulty we have experienced in this area in the past. Our pace on a long run isn’t bad and we will do our best to fight for a place on the podium. As for the tyres, the softer compound is definitely quicker, but it’s also quite consistent in terms of performance.”
Giancarlo Fisichella: “I feel satisfied with this first day, which was particularly tough from a driving point of view. The major difficulties are in adapting to the different positions of the buttons and gaining confidence with the KERS. This morning, braking heavily at Ascari, I flat-spotted the left front tyre and that meant I had to fit the softer tyres earlier than planned: I felt more confident with those and I managed to drive at a strong pace. In both sessions, we didn’t go looking for performance and I had a lot of fuel on board. The potential is there to get onto the front few rows, but I need a bit more time to improve, especially in terms of braking and cutting the kerbs.”
Chris Dyer: “We can be satisfied with the result of the work we did with both drivers today. We completed our programme without any problems, concentrating on finding the best set-up on the car. We are pleased with the performance over a long run and, naturally, tomorrow morning, we will work on performance over the first lap, to prepare for qualifying. Giancarlo tackled the day’s work without experiencing any difficulty and we are not worried about his lap time, because the fundamental thing is for him to get experience in the car and with the use of KERS.”
The first of the practice running for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix got underway today at the Monza circuit in northern Italy.
Brawn GP’s Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button used the two ninety-minute sessions to evaluate their Brawn-Mercedes cars in the low downforce configuration required at the fastest circuit on the Formula One calendar.
Rubens completed 59 laps over the course of the day with Jenson totalling 53 laps as the pair focused on set-up work and an evaluation of the two Bridgestone Potenza tyre compounds available this weekend.
RESULTS
Drivers Car No. Chassis No. Free Practice 1 Free Practice 2
Rubens Barrichello 23 BGP 001-03 24 laps 01:24.826 P12 35 laps 01:25.140 P16
Jenson Button 22 BGP 001-02 21 laps 01:24.706 P7 32 laps 01:25.424 P19
Weather Warm and sunny
Temperatures Air: 25-28°C Track: 28-41°C
RUBENS BARRICHELLO
“Our programme went pretty much as planned today with the performance of the car as we were expecting. Our set-up work was focused on long runs and I’m fairly happy with how the car feels and with the braking stability. We have some work to do on the balance but overall a good start to the weekend although today’s running doesn’t really give us an indication of how qualifying will play out tomorrow.”
*JENSON BUTTON
“We did a lot of set-up work today with the car in the low downforce configuration although we had a couple of issues which meant that I couldn’t do the long runs that we had planned so that was a bit frustrating. Everything was sorted out by the end of the day which is good but we have a lot of work ahead of us. It feels very different running with such low downforce but the car has been performing reasonably well. We need to work on the fine-tuning of the set-up overnight to ensure that I’m completely happy with the balance before qualifying.”
ROSS BRAWN
“With Monza being such a unique low downforce circuit and the fact that we haven’t had the opportunity to here test this year, today’s practice sessions were particularly important to work on the set-up of the car. Our main focus has been on race preparation to ensure that we understand how the car feels with the low downforce. We’re reasonably happy with our progress over the course of the day and looking forward to the weekend ahead.”
The ING Renault F1 Team completed a busy day of practice in preparation for this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.
Fernando Alonso, R2904
Free practice 1: 21 laps, 1:24.477, P4
Run 1: 5 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 8 laps, same hard tyres, brake balance adjust
Run 3: 7 laps, same hard tyres, front ride height and front wing adjust
Free Practice 2: 35 laps, 1:24.297, P3
Run 1: 6 laps, new hard tyres, gear ratios changed
Run 2: 9 laps, new soft tyres
Run 3: 9 laps, new hard tyres
Run 4: 5 laps, same hard tyres, rear wing adjustment
Run 5: 6 laps, new soft tyres
Fernando: “It was a normal Friday for us where we worked on set-up and evaluated the tyres. If we can find some more performance tomorrow then hopefully we can be in good shape for qualifying.”
Romain Grosjean, R2903
Free practice 1: 18 laps, 1:25.612, P15
Run 1: 8 laps, new hard tyres
Run 2: 5 laps, same hard tyres, change to front wing
Run 3: 4 laps, same hard tyres, change to ride height and front wing
Free Practice 2: 31 laps, 1:24.163, P2
Run 1: 6 laps, new hard tyres, new gear box ratios
Run 2: 8 laps, new hard tyres
Run 3: 10 laps, new soft tyres
Run 4: 3 laps, same soft tyres, change to engine cooling
Run 5: 5 laps, new soft tyres
Romain: “Today has gone rather well, although I had to learn the Monza circuit for the first time in an F1 car. It’s the ‘temple of speed’ and a legendary circuit where there is a lot to learn, especially running with the KERS and so there were lots of new procedures for me to get used to. We finished the day in good shape and I’m continuing to work well with the engineers. I tried to improve the set-up and the results were positive so I will continue in the same way tomorrow.”
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering
“Monza is unique circuit and among the many things we have to consider here is brake wear. For this reason, it is necessary to run quite high fuel loads during practice to test the brakes. At the same time, tyres are critical and equally this is another reason to run high fuel loads. Naturally this gives great changes between race set-up and qualifying set-up so today we ran both high and low fuel loads and we are satisfied with the performance of the car in both conditions.”
Adrian Sutil - 1st: Everything went well today. The car was working perfectly and we can be very happy about the result. It was a very, very good time that came as a result of some good work, a great set-up and getting the tyres to work well. We didn't try specifically to go fastest but if you are on top of your game and the car is working well there's no reason why you couldn't be P1 at the end of the session. It was a very productive day on a very cool track and it's good to have some fun right now.
Tonio Liuzzi - 12th: Today was much better than the straight line testing! It's a completely different approach as you get used to the rhythm, the braking points and I think it's a great challenge. We went for longer runs and covering a race distance and everything is going in the right direction. For now I am taking it a bit easy as I want to get used to the tyres and the car and tomorrow we will work on the lap time for qualifying. We knew we would have a competitive car and I felt the balance was good, and there is still at least half a second more as I had some traffic on some of my fastest laps. It's just the beginning of the weekend but I am really happy about how it went. I think the car is responding really well and we are optimistic for tomorrow.
Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: A very good first day back in a race seat for Tonio, and a productive programme from Adrian. We lost some time with Adrian's car at the start of FP2 following a planned engine change, but once back on track he made good progress. The car seems to be performing well at lower downforce in race trim, but as usual at this demanding circuit there is plenty of work to do to prepare for qualifying.
Timo Glock, P1 - 1:26.325, 20th; P2 - 1:24.634, 6th
“It was a reasonably good second practice. It was tougher in the morning but we made some changes to the set-up and in the afternoon the car felt better overall. We got more performance from the car and got through our normal programme with no issues. The car feels pretty good but of course we need to work on improving our lap times again. If we can find the right aero balance I think we will be okay here. The new kerbs are fine; they are different to last year but still acceptable. The weather was also quite a bit different to last year's rain and that was definitely an improvement."
Jarno Trulli, P1 - 1:26.020, 19th; P2 - 1:24.967, 13th
"That was a typical Friday for me and it went smoothly with no problems. As usual we tested the two different tyres and also worked on setting up the car. We made some improvements from first practice so in the afternoon I was happier with the car. We still have some work to do to improve and get the best out of it around this track so we will look at all the data to improve the set-up for qualifying. Today we also experienced the new kerbs at the chicanes for the first time and these seem to be okay; I had no problem with them. It's nice to be back in Italy, driving in front of my home fans, and I just hope I can do a good race on Sunday."
Dieter Gass, Toyota chief engineer race and test:
"Monza is always a very particular circuit to race on but due to the lack of testing this year the difference compared to other tracks seems to be even bigger. You have the usual problems of trying to get used to running much lower downforce, which obviously means you are lacking grip compared to your baseline configuration. We had a decent day and went through our programme which has given us plenty of information to work with so we will continue working on the car balance prior to qualifying. In terms of tyres, the medium and soft compounds seem to behave pretty much as expected so we don't expect any major issues as both appear to be reasonable."
McLaren
Heikki Kovalainen, P2 - 1:24.332, 8th; P2 - 1:24.482, 4th
“At Monza, you’re always facing the problem of balancing overall downforce with grip through the corners - and I think today was possibly better than we anticipated. We’re quicker in the corners than we were last year, which is good. The KERS advantage here is nearly four tenths per lap so it’s really helpful along the straights and out of the slower corners. Others have more downforce compared with us, but we have this fantastic KERS from Mercedes-Benz. It’s funny: the teams have all adopted different technical solutions but the laptimes are still very close together - that’s the beauty of Formula One.”
Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:23.936, 1st; P2 - 1:24.902, 11th
“I’m pleased with our progress. It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you arrive at a unique circuit such as this because you want to see if you’ve taken the right direction with the car’s aerodynamics. But this morning’s session showed us that the engineers had made a very accurate assessment of what would be needed. KERS certainly helps around here - we can expect it to be worth nearly four tenths in qualifying tomorrow - but we also made some good progress with our overall package. This afternoon was spent on heavier fuel-loads, so you can’t read too much into the times, but I’m encouraged by where we are.”
Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal:
“A disciplined day’s work for the team today as we evaluated our low-downforce Monza aero components and looked at tyre performance on heavier fuel loads. We’re encouraged by the results of today’s programme, but are fully aware that all teams will be making substantial changes overnight and, equally, we’ll need to further adapt our cars ahead of qualifying. Nonetheless, we’re encouraged by the direction we’ve taken and the results we’ve seen in both of today’s sessions.”
Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport:
“Two good and productive sessions for us today. As we’ve all learned over the course of this season, the field is very tight. Heikki in fourth is separated from Giancarlo Fisichella in 20th position by just over a second, and all 20 cars are within 1.6 seconds. Our long runs on high fuel loads looked quite promising compared with our competitors, but I seriously think there are a handful of teams who can compete for pole tomorrow.”
*Mark Webber, P1 - 1:24.759, 9th; P2 - 1:24.979, 14th
“A mixed day. We had an electrical problem in P2, which probably cost us about a run and a half, so it was a good recovery from the guys to get the car turned back around. Mileage is important here, as it’s the first time we’ve driven in Monza this year - normally we test here beforehand. It’s always a unique track to drive - with high top speeds and the car moving around - so I enjoyed driving today. We’ve got a bit of pace to find, but I’m sure we’ll be in the running tomorrow.”
Sebastian Vettel, P1 - 1:25.951, 18th; P2 - 1:25.386, 18th
“It’s quite a surprise today to look at the lap times and see who is on top and who’s in the midfield. Nothing is wrong for us and everything went to plan - we knew we faced a difficult Friday with limited mileage due to the small number of engines I have left until the end of the season. We used the laps we had available today and it seemed to go okay. We still have to improve, so we’ll now look to see who was fast and who was playing with fuel loads. At this stage it seems impossible to predict who will be on top.”
Sebastien Buemi, P1 - 1:24.703, 6th; P2 - 1:24.884, 10th
“We had a good day, running trouble free in both sessions. Now, we just need to find a bit more speed for tomorrow, when we will have a new engine, so let’s wait and see what we can do. It’s nice to drive at such a high speed track, because it gives you a different feeling, hitting speeds you never see anywhere else.”
Jaime Alguersuari, P1 - 1:25.742, 17th; P2 - 1:25.003, 15th
“I found it quite tough driving today for the first time, with this low downforce package, as I had no experience of that so far in F1. But that’s a good thing, as it is all part of my learning experience. I felt I got an understanding of how to drive the car on new and old tyres and with high and low fuel loads and I had a good feeling in the car. We have a reasonable set-up on the car, but I think we can improve it still further tomorrow.”
*Robert Kubica, P1 - 1:24.813, 11th; P2 - 1:24.622, 5th
“We lost quite a lot of time in the morning session due to a problem with the brakes. Fortunately we were able to change the brakes in time and I completed a baseline run at the end of the session. In the afternoon we worked on the set-up of the car and tried to evaluate the tyres.”
Nick Heidfeld, P1 - 1:24.683, 5th; P2 - 1:24.693, 7th
“The lap times are not bad, especially when you take into account I did my fastest lap in the second session quite early on and even had some traffic. The car’s balance is better than it has been on some other Fridays, but there is still room for improvement. It is challenging to get the balance right for both qualifying and the race. We did the usual tyre evaluation and compared the softer and the harder compounds on long runs. The height of the new kerbs changes the circuit quite a lot, you have to get used to it and look where you can still go over them and which ones you better avoid. At the end of the second session I pitted a few minutes early after I went straight on at the Ascari chicane and wanted to have the car checked.”
Willy Rampf, BMW Sauber head of engineering:
“Monza is the only track where we run the low downforce package, therefore we invested quite some time in the morning to find a baseline for the set-up of the car. On the one hand it’s crucial here not to lose too much time riding the kerbs, while on the other hand braking stability is even more important here than on other tracks. In the afternoon we concentrated fully on race preparation and on the tyre comparisons. We are quite happy with the results on low fuel, however, with higher fuel loads we still have some work to do.”
Objectives P1
• Aero and mechanical set-up
Objectives P2
• Performance evaluation of the tyres. Evaluation of aero and mechanical set-up
Conclusions – Patrick Head, Director of Engineering
“We’ve been doing our homework on the tyres today. Both tyres look pretty good and we’ve gathered a lot of data today to go through to optimise our set-up for qualifying tomorrow.”
Nico Rosberg
Runs P1: Run 1 new primes (2 laps) install, run 2 new primes (10 laps) baseline, run 3 scrubbed prime (9 laps) mechanical set-up, run 4 scrubbed prime (8 laps) aero level Runs P2: Run 1 scrubbed primes (6 laps) baseline, run 2 new prime (10 laps) tyre test, run 3 new option (10 laps) tyre test, run 4 new option (6 laps) mechanical test, run 5 scrubbed options (6 laps) aero level
“The most important job today is to find the compromise between top speed and grip and it’s not easy to arrive at the optimum downforce level. We were very slow on the straights this morning, so we looked at this and we have found a good solution. Tyres are just as important and we have completed a good test, from my point of view the direction is pretty clear. The rest of our running time was focused on aerodynamics and we found some good direction, but despite doing some good homework, it is going to be difficult for us here and it won’t be an easy weekend. To repeat the Spa performance of making into the top ten in qualifying will require a helluva lap, but that’s not to say we can’t pull it out of the bag!”
Kazuki Nakajima
Runs P1: Run 1 new primes (2 laps) install, run 2 scrubbed prime (10 laps) baseline, run 3 scrubbed prime (9 laps) mechanical set-up, run 4 scrubbed prime (7 laps) aero level Runs P2: Run 1 new prime (7 laps) baseline new tyres, run 2 scrubbed prime (6 laps) aero level, run 3 new option (12 laps) new tyres, run 4 new option (6 laps) mechanical test, run 5 scrubbed option (5 laps) mechanical test
“Although we are not expecting much here, today didn’t go too badly. Certainly compared to Spa, I think I will be more competitive here, although it is perhaps too early to say how we will go in qualifying. We worked hard today and tried many different technical options, but importantly found some positive direction, so I think the main priority to is maintain this progress tomorrow.”
Patrick Head, Director of Engineering:
“We’ve been doing our homework on the tyres today. Both tyres look pretty good and we’ve gathered a lot of data today to go through to optimise our set-up for qualifying tomorrow.”
