Formula 1 News

2010 German GP, practice: Team quotes 

Martin Whitmarsh: “Today’s two sessions presented difficult and changeable conditions in which to conduct the necessary tests, but we nonetheless gathered a lot of useful data that will hopefully give us good direction throughout the rest of the weekend. Clearly, Lewis’s small error this morning caused damage to his car that took a while to repair, thereby limiting his running this afternoon. In the end he went out with just 13 minutes left, and did just one run on the Prime tyre. Nonetheless, he posted the seventh-fastest lap of the session and remains well placed to do a solid job tomorrow. This afternoon Jenson knuckled down to a disciplined programme of long running on heavy fuel loads, concentrating on race durability. We feel we have decent pace here – and, as I say, having concentrated largely on long running on heavy fuel loads today, will focus on qualifying practice tomorrow morning.”

Mike Gascoyne: “A useful day for us with no real problems with either car. Jarno’s final run was brought to an early end with a small problem with his fuel pump, but apart from that it was a trouble free session. Fairuz did an excellent job this morning in the wet session, running well on both the full wets and the inters. Considering the limited running he’s had in the car he should be very pleased with his day’s work. In the afternoon we were able to work on the dry setup and I think we found a clear direction towards the end of the session and there’s definitely more performance to come tomorrow.”

Riad Asmat: “Firstly it was good to see Fairuz put in a very good morning’s work in what were pretty tricky conditions. He did exactly what we asked of him and it’s great to see he got a decent run compared to the limited track time he had at Silverstone. We’ve got a fair amount to come tomorrow in terms of pace, and the team will work hard to build on the progress we’ve been making throughout the season, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

Laurent Mekies: “We had a trouble free day with both drivers completing a lot of laps. In the morning, we were able to evaluate the extreme wet and the intermediate tyres, working in race conditions, to see in what situations both compounds were at their best. Jaime even tried the dry tyres in damp conditions this morning, which is good in terms of him building experience. Overall, in these difficult conditions, the drivers made no mistakes which is another positive element. This afternoon, in the dry, we returned to our routine Friday work, evaluating different aero components, as well as working on car set-up on the two dry tyre compounds. Both behaved quite well and the results of running on the two rain tyres in the morning also proved that they last well on this track.”

Dominic Harlow: “One wet and one almost completely dry session today. During the morning we ran both the wet and the intermediate tyres, establishing the crossovers and trying to get a feel for the way the track was drying. The car was quite well balanced in the tricky conditions and Adrian set a good pace. In FP2 we ran our option tyres just at the moment it started to spit with rain, so probably lost the best of the performance from them. All the same quite an interesting scenario this weekend and we now have the information to build on for qualifying and the race.”

James Key: “We haven’t been in the wet for a while, so we had to see where we were this morning on the full wet tyres which we started on, and then the intermediate tyres later in the session. It looked okay, and the drivers were happy with the car towards the end of the session, as the grip came back. In the second session we decided to go out early just in case it rained again. We did as much of the programme that was planned for the first session, but also combined this with the tyre tests. The session was fairly productive, and in general the drivers were happy with the car. There were some balance issues because of the general track conditions, but we have been able to cope with our setup. The updates we’ve got seem to work as we expected, which is good.”

Stefano Domenicali: “It is always best to start a race weekend in this fashion, but we are perfectly aware that today’s results are even less meaningful than usual. Furthermore, at the last two races, we have seen our drivers in the top places on Friday afternoon and everyone knows how it ended up… But superstition apart, we wanted to get through our planned programme and we did so, despite the weather which was very changeable. Now we have to work towards qualifying, which I expect to be very closely contested and then the race. From what we have seen so far, the Red Bull is stll the quickest car, but we are competitive.”

Chris Dyer: “It was quite a productive day. Despite the changing weather, which definitely didn’t help, we nevertheless managed to work through practically all the planned programme. We have a few new technical updates on the F10, which seem to have given us something extra in terms of car performance. We managed to evaluate both types of dry tyre and our drivers felt relatively comfortable with both the hard and the soft, and equally pleased with the car. On a track like this, the gaps are shortened, so we can expect a very close fight tomorrow in qualifying. Furthermore, today’s times have to be seen as less representative than usual given the rapid change in track conditions. Tomorrow’s forecast is for rain in the morning, while for qualifying, at least according to the latest bulletin from the middle of this afternoon, should take place in the dry, as should Sunday’s race.”

Colin Kolles: “It was a positive first day for our team here in Hockenheim and we could do a lot of laps in both sessions. When it stopped raining in the first practice, the track got quicker and we changed to intermediate tyres. Bruno Senna showed a good performance in wet conditions. It was encouraging to see that under these circumstances, we are able to compete with the other drivers. But there is a fine line in finding the right measure when the track is getting dry again. For Sakon Yamamoto it was the first time in the rain for a long time and he was concentrating on driving under these conditions and getting as much data as possible. Now, we are hoping for a good and successful Saturday and Sunday.”

Sam Michael: “We had a good day’s practice and got through some of our planned schedule which included assessing some new parts. We also covered the usual Friday items such as set-up, cooling and tyres. The car looks reasonable and we need to continue the trend from the last few races. We ran some new parts on both cars today and they are all working as expected and will be carried forward. Additionally, Rubens is running a further step on the diffuser.”

Alan Permane: “There were no particular dramas. We ran both types of wet tyre as the circuit required, using the full wet first then intermediates as it dried out. Both cars tended a little bit towards understeer, but there were no major problems, and in fact Vitaly was a bit happier with the car than Robert in the conditions. The conditions made life a bit difficult and meant we have not done as much of an assessment as we would have liked. A lot of the resurfacing has been done at turn six and the circuit took a long time to dry there because the tarmac is very closed. We had a lot of problems with the super-soft compound in Montreal but it looks to be behaving very normally here. However, we were not able to do a great comparison of the two tyre types, because the circuit was still wet in some corners when we ran the hard compound at the start of the second session. Neither tyre looked too difficult to manage, but the hard took a few laps to warm up then just got faster and faster, while the performance was there straight away on the super-soft, but with a touch more understeer. At the moment, we’re expecting more rain today, and tomorrow morning may be wet too, but we believe qualifying and the race should be dry. Although the circuit was very green today, we did a long run on the super-soft with no problem at all during the second session, so we’ve got no concerns over the tyres. And we had a predominantly dry session this afternoon to get a handle on the car set-up and understand where we are in terms of performance.

Ross Brawn: “It’s been an unusual and challenging day with the changing track conditions and a few small issues to overcome during our running. The car looked reasonable in the wet this morning and the experience will be helpful if the weather continues to be variable. This afternoon gave us the first opportunity to analyse our upgrades on a dry track. The initial feedback looks positive but we need to take full advantage of the final practice hour tomorrow to maximise their potential.”

Norbert Haug: “We learned quite a lot today about the new upgrades that we are introducing here at our home race in Hockenheim. We had reasonable results but it is clear that there still is a gap to the quickest. Our race pace didn’t look too bad so tomorrow we need to get a decent qualifying position for both our cars in order to get respectable results in front of our home crowd.”

Nick Wirth: “A positive start to the weekend, despite tricky weather conditions. Both drivers and their engineers adapted their respective programmes well to the changing conditions, and we have made more progress on car performance with the new developments that we ran today. As this package came so late from our digital development process, we were only able to get some of the elements of our Hockenheim upgrade on the cars today. The rest of the package will be fitted this evening, plus we’ll analyse the tests done today and look forward to some more progress tomorrow and Sunday.”