European Grand Prix: Friday Practice Quotes

European Grand Prix: Friday Practice Quotes

European Grand Prix: Friday Practice Quotes

Brawn GP


Fernando Alonso, P1 - 1:43.345, 9th; P2 - 1:39.404, 1st
“It was a positive day for us with some good laps and the car performed well right from the start of the first session. We worked on the set-up throughout the day and now we’re pretty much happy with what we have so I think we are in good shape for the rest of the weekend. The incident with Nick Heidfeld this afternoon was a normal incident that can happen during racing or free practice. For tomorrow, we will try our best to get on the front row of the grid with the objective of scoring points on Sunday.”

Jenson Button, P1 - 1:43.074, 4th; P2 - 1:40.178, 2nd
“We’ve had a reasonably good first day of practice and it’s encouraging to see that the car seems to be on the pace again. The focus of our programme was on set-up checks and back-to-back evaluations to confirm that the work done back at the factory after our shutdown was in the right direction. There is still some work needed on the set-up before qualifying as I’m not completely happy with the balance but all in all the pace of the car seems reasonably good.”

Rubens Barrichello, P1 - 1:42.460, 1st; P2 - 1:40.209, 3rd
“It feels great to be back to what seems to be a competitive level of pace. The two practice sessions today went well with a lot of work achieved on both sides of the garage. I’m pretty happy with the data that we collected and with the way that the car developed over the course of the day. If we can continue in this direction then it should be a good weekend.”

Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:43.746, 14th; P2 - 1:40.385, 4th
“I had a difficult start in the morning because the tyres grained straightaway. I was then left with a grained set for the remainder of the session which meant I didn’t learn much at all. The afternoon was much better as we managed a good tyre test so we now have much more information for Sunday. We also made some positive set-up changes and have a good handle on which way to go with the car. In general, it was ok today. Performance-wise, we are not quite where we want to be so we have some further analysis to do ahead of tomorrow, but that should help us improve. We will wait and see.”

Kazuki Nakajima, P1 - 1:43.225, 7th; P2 - 1:40.503, 5th
“I think it was a good day for us. We seem to have good long run pace and, even on the new tyres, our times were decent on the short runs as well. The track was fairly green at the start of the day, but improved throughout the two sessions and will continue to do so for tomorrow’s qualifying, which I’m really looking forward to.”

Adrian Sutil, P1 - 1:43.209, 6th; P2 - 1:40.596, 6th
“It was a good day for us today. Sixth place is looking okay and I hope we’re now comfortably running at a Q2 pace. It’s very encouraging and I’m looking forward to getting out again tomorrow. We had a few small niggles on the car so we couldn’t run as much as we would have liked in the two sessions, but ultimately the balance was good. We did the tyre work as usual and although it was difficult at the start we understood the behaviour much more by the end of the second session. I don’t think it will be a problem in the race as we used a similar tyre in Bahrain and didn’t have any major issues on race day.”

Robert Kubica, P1 - 1:43.419, 12th; P2 - 1:40.643, 7th
“We brought some new components to Valencia and tested these in both sessions. In the afternoon we concentrated on evaluating the tyre compounds on long runs. For me it was a Friday without problems. The grip on the track is quite good and we were able to go at quite a good pace. However, we still face the same problems with the car we have had since the beginning of the season.”

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