Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:27.793, 7th; P2 - 1:25.801, 1st
“It’s great to be back in Melbourne - I love this place. The track was very dirty this morning - everybody usually waits for some of the cars to clean the line, but I just wanted to get out there and have some fun! I definitely think we’ve made some improvements to our pace compared with Bahrain. And the feeling over one lap is better for us. That’s what we’ve been trying to work on since the first race, and I feel more confident that, going into qualifying, we’ll be able to attack the guys who were at the front two weeks ago. Despite this afternoon’s wet weather, we went out early in the second session when it was still dry and got some good running under our belts in order to see how some of the changes we’d made between the sessions felt. We’re feeling positive. We’d hoped to evaluate some further changes at the end of P2, but the track still wasn’t up to full speed. Nevertheless, we feel quite comfortable with the balance of the car. I actually feel very relaxed: I’ve got a car that probably feels better than I’ve ever had at this track, so that’s a major positive.”
Jenson Button, P1 - 1:27.482, 3rd; P2 - 1:26.076, 2nd
“I’m reasonably pleased with the balance, and it’s just got better throughout the day. I’ve been happy since lap one this morning. It’s only Friday, and we may be lighter than some of the quick cars out there, but tomorrow we’ll see where we actually stand. Nevertheless, it’s important for us to find a good balance and get a good feeling with the car. We’ve just been trying to continually tweak the balance of the car, but it’s been tough because of the conditions and the traffic out on the circuit. Every time I’ve tried to put a good lap in on a new set of tyres, I’ve hit traffic. But we’ll make the best of it for tomorrow. For qualifying, the car should feel better than it did in Bahrain: it feels like we have the correct downforce level for this circuit. Both tyre compounds are working well too, so it’s all positive.
Mark Webber, P1 -1:28.683, 14th; P2 - 1:26.248, 3rd
“It wasn’t too bad today. Everyone’s programmes were disrupted in P2 with the intermittent weather. It’s pretty much the team’s worst nightmare when the weather’s just on the edge like that; you can’t commit to learning too much in the wet and it’s quite tricky in the dry as well. We had a couple of windows where we got some information though, so we have good data to go through tonight.”
Michael Schumacher, P1 - 1:28.550, 12th; P2 - 1:26.511, 4th
“As often on Fridays, the performance is difficult to judge as everybody seemed to be on different programmes. Having said that, I am quite happy with today’s sessions, even if we did not run too much overall. My first session was a bit handicapped by red flags, later we faced some rain in the second session. But all in all, we learned a lot and we could improve the set up of our car quite reasonably. In the end our times were competitive so I think we can look forward to the rest of the weekend.”
Vitaly Petrov, P1 - 1:28.114, 9th; P2 - 1:26.732, 5th
“This morning the car felt pretty good and better than it did in Bahrain. The first session was a learning experience for me as I got to know the track and did some set-up work. We knew it was going to be wet in the second session so we went out as early as we could on the dry tyres before the rain got too heavy. When the track was damp we did some runs to analyse a few things and to understand the balance of the car on different fuel loads. It could rain on Sunday so it was good experience to run in these conditions.”
Sebastien Buemi, P1 - 1:28.014, 14th; P2 - 1:26.832, 6th
“I was quite happy with the way things went, even if the weather was not so good. Unlike Bahrain, I managed to complete all the sessions which is positive. Now we have to analyse the data from FP2 as it should give us a good picture of tyre behaviour in all conditions - wet, dry, high and low fuel - working mainly in race trim. We are quite confident that we can be well prepared for qualifying and the race. A good day’s work.”
Adrian Sutil, P1 - n/a; P2 - 1:26.834, 7th
“The rain in the second session was not ideal, particularly as I had sat out the first session, but we did what we could and I think overall the findings were very positive. At the start of the session we did some running with the harder tyre compound and then with the softer. We also tried out the intermediate tyre when the circuit was wetter. Everything seems to be working OK and we could get all the information we wanted today. I still have a good feeling about this weekend and I would like to better the result we had in Bahrain.”
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