The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team has concluded a frustrating opening day of the French Grand Prix.
In the first of the two free practices this morning Adrian Sutil suffered a hydraulic leak and lost the majority of the one and a half hour session. He went back out on track towards the end of the time to complete 15 laps, however ended the practice three seconds from the fastest time. The German completed a further 32 laps in the next practice, but could not find a set-up balance to significantly better his time.
Christijan Albers was completing steady improvements in the first session, but in the opening minutes of the second practice the Dutchman ran over the kerbs on the exit to turn 12 and badly damaged his F8-VII’s chassis. Unable to switch to the spare chassis as he had already completed laps in his race car, Christijan was forced to watch the remaining time from the sidelines.
With one further practice session tomorrow before Qualifying, the team will hope for a marked improvement in fortunes.
Adrian Sutil (car 20)
‘I am not happy with today, I cannot find a balance I am happy with on the car. With one set-up I have a lot of understeer and with another I have oversteer; it is difficult to find a middle ground. We have a lot of work to do and we have to check all the data and see what we can do for tomorrow. ‘
Christijan Albers (car 21)
‘In the first session I was actually pretty happy with the car and I think we were making some good progress, but in the second session I touched the kerb on the exit of turn 12 and went straight ahead. Unfortunately this damaged the car and I couldn’t continue. I am disappointed as we still had two new sets of tyres to use and we could have improved the time. We did make some steps though and we will have to see what will happen tomorrow. ‘
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer
‘A pretty difficult day for us. Both drivers were struggling with the balance of the car and to put together consistent laps. Adrian lost a lot of time in the morning with a hydraulic leak but in the afternoon we improved the balance, although there is still a lot to work on. With Christijan we had a fairly good session early on, but then on the second run in the second session he made a mistake at turn 12 and damaged the chassis. We will now have to change that chassis tonight for him to be able to run tomorrow, so overall there is a lot to do to improve. ’
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