Nurburgring - Team reaction after Free practices 1 & 2

Toro Rosso Ferrari

Jaime Alguersuari - 1.34.487 - P15: “This was a good test day for us and I completed a lot of laps. We had a busy programme, trying some things for the future and also various different set-up scenarios. I did a long run on the Option tyre this afternoon and we are still looking better in race trim than in the qualifying simulation. Based on this, I would say we have the possibility to score some more points on Sunday, although the weather is looking uncertain. Tomorrow morning we can look to improve the car a bit more for the race and in the afternoon, qualifying will again be the limiting factor for us, because it will be very difficult to get ahead of our closest opponents, but I am very motivated for the race.”

Sebastien Buemi - 1.35.371 - P13 (FP1): “I had a misfire from early on in the morning session, but we continued to run anyway. Then in the afternoon it got worse and the mechanics had to strip down the car to trace the cause of it, so I could not run in FP2. In the morning session, I was able to evaluate the experimental Soft compound tyres that Pirelli supplied us here. However, despite the lack of laps, I still believe we can move forward tomorrow, when there is also a chance the weather could be different with the threat of rain. So, overnight we have to fix the car then decide on what set-up to run if it is wet and despite today’s difficulties, I still believe we can have a competitive weekend.”

Laurent Mekies (Chief Engineer): “We ran a good programme with Jaime today, doing some important testing in terms of set-up work in the morning. Then, in the afternoon, we concentrated on race set-up and he did a very long run on the Option tyre, which will provide useful data for the rest of the weekend. Unfortunately, Sebastien’s day did not go smoothly, as we had an issue on the car which prevented him from running in FP2. Now all our efforts are focussed on finding and fixing the problem before tomorrow. Hopefully, we can take elements of what we learned from Jaime’s data today and transpose it onto Sebastien’s car for tomorrow.”

The Sauber F1 Team had a busy but smooth start to the German Grand Prix weekend at the Nürburgring. In the morning’s first free practice session Sergio Pérez and Kamui Kobayashi were busy with aerodynamic tests, and only used the harder of the two tyre compounds. They were 16th and 19th respectively. In the second session they worked with the various tyre compounds and finished 13th and 16th respectively. The longer runs looked fine, but both drivers had difficulties putting in good times on single laps.

Sergio Pérez - 1.34.113 - P13: “Today was very busy. In the first session we did some aero tests, and only in the second session worked with the different tyres. We are not as competitive yet as we thought we would be here, but we did a reasonable job today and hopefully in qualifying we can aim for higher positions.”

Kamui Kobayashi - 1.34.491 - P14: “It was not so easy today. We went through our programme with no problems, but overall we are struggling with grip and don’t understand why yet. We are not yet as good as we expected we would be, and have to improve for tomorrow.”

James Key, Technical Director: “In the morning session both cars did a round testing aero items. We were looking at various new parts and did no real set up work in that session. In the afternoon we concentrated on the tyres available. We ran the test tyre Pirelli provided, which was a soft compound, and it looked okay. We also ran the standard soft tyre for here, and did some race runs towards the end of the session. Generally it was a very productive day. Mainly we now need to work a little on getting the tyres to work in the colder temperatures.”

FP1 objectives:
— Evaluation of diffuser and aerodynamic developments on Adrian’s car
— Assessment of development soft Pirelli tyre
— Set-up work exploring ride height and camber settings

FP2 objectives:
— Long run race simulation for tyres
— Continued evaluation of aerodynamic developments

Adrian Sutil - 1.33.211 - P10: “I struggled with some understeer in the car today through both sessions so we worked hard on trying to resolve those issues. We played around with a few things, changed the ride heights and found some improvements. The morning programme focussed on running with our new floor and everything looks quite positive with that. The afternoon was more preparation work for the race and getting the usual data for the tyres with some longer runs.”

Paul Di Resta - 1.33.299 - P12: “It was my first time on the full Grand Prix circuit here at the Nurburging so part of today was about getting up to speed and confident on the track. From the start of the session the balance of the car felt quite stable, especially through the higher speed corners. We tried to improve the performance of the car in the low speed corners and worked on braking stability to avoid rear locking. Overall the car has been working well today and it gives us a good basis to build on overnight.”

Nico Hulkenberg - 1.33.858 - P9 (FP1): “I enjoyed the session and it was fun to drive the Nurburgring for the first time with a Formula One car. But it was a tricky start because I lost the KERS for my first run, which changed the car behaviour quite a bit. Fortunately we got the KERS back for the rest of my runs. One of the objectives of the day was doing a comparison of the new floor on Adrian’s car this morning while I ran with the older version. That gave us some useful data. Then I did my final run on the new soft development tyre, which felt pretty good.”

Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director: "It has been quite cold here today and we were fortunate to get away without any rain showers. The team worked very hard to deliver a broad programme, with the time both in and out of the sessions used very productively, which should be a good basis for our weekend. Although we haven’t been here for a couple of years, the car balance was quite understeery as usual and we have some work to do to adapt to the long cambered corners on this track. Overall it seems we are heading in the right direction.”

Objectives P1
— Evaluation of new aero parts including new front and rear wings
— Dry set-up work

Objectives P2
— Comparison work of new aero parts on both cars
— Tyre testing on long runs and set-up work

Sam Michael, Technical Director: Today we spent the morning evaluating a new rear wing, front wing and suspension design. We still have some work to do on all of those items, so we haven’t decided which options to race here in the Grand Prix. With the high altitude here, we have to set-up the car differently and today was about optimising the set-up around that.

Rubens Barrichello - 1.34.344 - P14: We weren’t as competitive as we should have been today but if the weather changes it could be interesting. I really like the track so I’m looking forward to a better weekend.

Pastor Maldonado - 1.34.996 - P17: We had a few problems today and I didn’t have a great feeling in the car. I think it will be a tough weekend for us but we are working hard and hoping to improve for tomorrow.

The German Grand Prix weekend got underway today for the MERCEDES GP PETRONAS team, with the first two practice sessions taking place at the historic Nürburgring circuit in the Eifel Mountains.

— Michael and Nico both completed two busy and trouble-free practice sessions in dry but cool conditions
— Michael completed 62 laps and Nico 65 laps - a total of nearly 650 km, equivalent to more than two race distances
— The dry running was particularly valuable for further developing the new aerodynamic package introduced in Silverstone

Michael Schumacher - 1.32.411 - P5: “I’m quite happy with the work that we achieved today and we are going in a good direction. We are continually developing our car and days like today help that process. It’s difficult to see the real picture for the weekend however; we don’t know what fuel loads the other cars were running and we need to have a close look at our data. It was a really nice feeling to drive the corner which bears my name here in a Formula One car; I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that at the time that we inaugurated the corner.”

Nico Rosberg - 1.32.557 - P6: “It’s amazing to see how many spectators came to the Nürburgring today for the practice sessions. I love the atmosphere at the German Grand Prix and I tried to wave to the fans but there’s not much space for it in the car! In general, I am happy with our work and progress today so far. It seems that the new parts are working quite well in the dry and I think there is a small step forward. However on Fridays, you never know exactly where you are and what the other teams are doing.”

Ross Brawn: “We’ve had a solid day to start our German Grand Prix weekend here at the Nürburgring. It was a particularly useful day to further evaluate our new exhaust system following its introduction at Silverstone and the limited dry running that we were able to achieve there. It was a good effort from everyone in the two sessions today but it would be nice to find a little more lap time before qualifying tomorrow.”

Norbert Haug: “A productive first day at our home Grand Prix: surprisingly it stayed dry, but the forecast still predicts rain for race day. We worked through our planned programme and evaluated all three different types of Pirelli tyre available to us today. Our race simulation at the end of P2 showed consistent lap times, which were of course still not quick enough compared to the top three teams. Our positions in the rankings today reflect more or less our current place in the pecking order.”

Mark Webber - 1.31.711 - P1: So far so good; the car feels pretty good here.
Fernando and Seb are really quick as well and you never know when McLaren might turn up tomorrow too. I haven’t been watching them too
much today, we’ve been concentrating on ourselves and trying to improve the car with each run, that’s the most important thing we can do. It’s nice if it stays dry, as it’s a bit easier to manage, but whatever tomorrow throws at us, we should be ready for it. I’m feeling comfortable so far.”

Sebastian Vettel - 1.32.084 - P3: “It was cold out there today! It was good fun,
the circuit was quite slippery with the low temperatures, but we did a lot of laps and the car seems okay, although I’m not 100% happy yet. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, but at this stage we’ve got a bit of work to do. Ferrari looks very competitive, McLaren is a bit harder to judge, but we will see. We don’t know the conditions for tomorrow, rain is forecast, but it
depends when and if it will come.”

Heikki Kovalainen - 1.35.753 - P18: "I’m pleased with today’s performance - that was one of the good Fridays. We completed more laps than anyone else out there and the car has felt good all day. I can feel that we have made a decent improvement to the back of the car which helped us find a good balance pretty early on and it was working well on both tyre compounds, so this goes down as a good day’s work."

Karun Chandhok - 1.37.248 - P20: "That was good day of learning. The main area I’ve been looking at is the brakes - we use a different material here to my previous team so I think that’s why I’ve maybe ended up with quite a lot of square tyres today! I had a few moments under braking, and a couple of lock-ups, but that’s what today was about - getting used to the tyres and the brakes and easing myself into a place where I can start to push. Over the day I improved my time from this morning by over 1.5 seconds, so I’m pleased with that, and now I’ll work with the engineers to find more time and keep pushing forwards tomorrow."

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader: "The main challenge here is to work on the driveability of the engines. We need to find a good top speed for the long straight and couple that with strong traction out of the slow and medium speed corners, and after having completed so many laps we have a very decent amount of data to work on to give the drivers the best package we can. We also wanted to make sure Karun could run as much as possible on different fuel loads and get used to the different engine maps, so the fact he completed so much mileage means this has been a good day all round."

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: "A pretty useful first day where we were able to complete the programmes on both cars and make sure Karun completed a decent number of laps. He was obviously on a steep learning curve so we wanted to give him a chance to work on the tyres, both over a single lap and on long runs and he acquitted himself very well in both sessions. He and Heikki were struggling to warm up the front tyres, especially on the harder compound, but we can work on that and look forward to tomorrow."

Riad Asmat, Chief Executive Officer: "I am delighted with how today has gone, both in terms of the mileage we completed and the fact that both Karun and Heikki have performed so well. Karun has done exactly what we needed him to do - learn as much as possible, avoid any mistakes and ease himself into his race weekend. There is definitely more to come from him in pace and he can be pleased with how well he has grabbed the opportunity he has here in Germany. It is also good to see that the work that has been going on at the factory to resolve the reliability issues that befell us at the last race appears to have eradicated those problems, so now we have to make sure we have another strong Saturday and look forward to seeing both cars cross the line on Sunday."

Narain Karthikeyan and Daniel Ricciardo finished in 20th and 22nd
places respectively after today’s first free practice sessions for the
Santander German Grand Prix. In the second free practice Vitantonio
Liuzzi took over, having handed over his car to Narain Karthikeyan this
morning and his 31 lap session was trouble-free. Narain drove 22 laps.

Daniel Ricciardo encountered no problems in the first session and
could continue to familiarise himself with the car but he had to pull
off to the side of the track after a trail of white smoke came out the
back of his car, ending his second practice session prematurely.

Narain Karthikeyan - 1.38.504 - P20 (FP1): "It’s good to be back in the car. We had a good
set-up and a proper session and enough running time to test mechanical
parts. Some changes that we made to the car had the effect I was hoping
for. I am proud to have kept the 20th position in the classification
even if I did not get the lap together. I could have gone quicker."

Vitantonio Liuzzi - 1.38.145 - P22: "Overall, the afternoon was a good session. I focused a bit on everything. It’s important to understand the tyres and how they react for the long distance race. It is also important to
improve our speed and the balance in terms of set-up and aerodynamics so we had one and a half hours to work on both and I think we covered both areas. It was a good Friday".

Daniel Ricciardo - 1.40.737 - P23: "I had an easy start to get used to the car. We worked on the balance of the car and the tyres. A good first session to start my second ever F1 race weekend. Unfortunately we had a small problem with the car in the second session and could not take full
advantage of all the track time."

Colin Kolles, Team Principal: "It’s Friday practice as usual, and we
made good progress despite a second session problem. Narain had a good
session in the morning and was still the fastest Indian on four wheels
in the World. Unfortunately Daniel’s car encountered an engine problem.
However, we seem quite competitive on long runs and the balance of the
car was good right from the start of the day. We will have a lot of work
to do tomorrow - assuming it is dry to prepare our race strategy."

Lewis Hamilton - 1.32.724 - P7: "It’s been a productive day. We got through our run-plans well, and my long-run pace is better than it was at Silverstone, which is a good thing.

"We’ve got some updates on the car and they seem to be working, which is also positive. But it’s only Friday, so it’s too soon to draw conclusions - and, besides, and we don’t know what programmes the other teams were running.

"The Ferraris look like they’re up there, and the Red Bulls seem quick too, but anything can happen in the race and we’ll be working hard tonight and tomorrow to maximise our chances."

Jenson Button - 1.33.225 - P11: "It’s been a slightly frustrating day for me. I couldn’t get a good balance on the car this morning - and, once we’d found some rear grip in the afternoon session, my KERS Hybrid system was no longer working. That cost me quite a bit of lap-time under braking and on corner exits.

"Then, with 20 minutes of the afternoon session remaining, a problem with an experimental exhaust brought my day to a premature end. It was a test part and failures sometimes happen when you’re trying new things on a Friday.

"Looking to tomorrow, I think it will be difficult for us to beat the Red Bulls in qualifying. But our aim is to race with the front-runners on Sunday afternoon."

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal: "Jenson had a KERS Hybrid problem today, and consequently had to do a bit of running without the lap-time benefits that KERS Hybrid confers.

"The experimental exhausts that he was testing also failed, which cut short his track time - but that’s an inevitable result of our having to use Fridays for testing.

"Lewis had a more trouble-free day and completed a competitive long run, which was encouraging.

"But today was basically a data-gathering exercise, and we’ll now analyse that data overnight in preparation for qualifying tomorrow."

Ferrari

It was a busy but straightforward day for the Prancing Horse, as both drivers worked through the usual tyre comparison – as well as evaluating experimental Soft tyres that Pirelli made available to all teams and trying some additional aero updates brought to the track for the first time here. The only unscheduled excitement came in the afternoon session when Fernando got sideways and ran across the gravel, avoiding another car.

Fernando Alonso - 1.31.879 - P2: "A normal sort of Friday just like any other. First impressions from the car are good, which confirms that we are working in the right direction. I’ve said it before, it’s not a case of a miracle having happened at Silverstone, because of the regulations relating to the exhausts. That result was down to the many improvements introduced race after race, as could be seen from the fact that, even from Monaco, we had returned to a good level in terms of being competitive and here too, where we are back to the Valencia rules, we are at the front end of the field. In theory, the cold is not a friend to us: in these conditions, the Red Bull has even more of an edge, but it’s up to us to adapt as well as possible to these conditions. On top of that, the low temperatures can also impact on our strategy for qualifying, given it’s not easy to do a time right from the first timed lap. It if was to rain, the situation would be even more complicated. The incident with Michael? Nothing happened, maybe he didn’t see me coming and then I had to brake suddenly. And then, on a Friday much like any other, a bit of excitement is quite welcome..."

Felipe Massa - 1.32.354 - P4: "It was a good day: we had so much work to get through and we managed to do it in both sessions, without having any problems. I would say we can be reasonably satisfied with our level of competitiveness, even if it’s too soon to say if we can fight for something important. The pace over a long run is not bad on both types of tyre: there is quite some difference between the Prime and the Option and we will need to keep that in mind when coming up with our race strategy. It’s a bit of a struggle to do a time immediately on the first lap, even with the Soft, but I think it’s the same problem for everyone. I like this circuit: there are climbs and descents and a lot of changes of direction which make it fun to drive. Sure, if on top of that you have a quick car then you can have even more fun!"

Pat Fry: "We had a very full work programme that we managed to complete without any reliability problems, which is always a good way to start a race weekend. Felipe and Fernando did practically two Grands Prix distances between them, picking up a lot of data that is now being studied by our engineers. There were various elements being assessed, both for this race and for the forthcoming ones: we will now try and put together the best possible package for the rest of the weekend. It’s hard to say where we are compared to the others because of the usual unknowns regarding fuel loads and also because of the different programmes being run. From what we could see, the low temperatures are certainly not helping when it comes to getting the tyres working at their best right from the first lap, especially with the Medium compound. Tomorrow, qualifying could be affected by rain, which means it will be important to do a good job of managing the tyres and the strategy."

The first two Free Practice sessions for Timo Glock’s home Grand Prix at the Nürburgring took place today in the typically cool conditions provided by the Eifel mountains.

With a track temperature of only 19°C, the morning session started with both Timo and Jérôme focusing on engine and aero mapping tests. Both drivers tried out different set-up directions based on what the team learned last week at the straight line test at RAF Cottesmore in the UK. After deciding to save the Pirelli P-Zero development tyres for the second session of the day, the main difficulty for the drivers was getting the Prime tyres up to temperature when they were out on track. Timo completed 23 laps and Jérôme, 22.

In the afternoon the track conditions improved, with both drivers on Option tyres improving on their morning lap times. Timo completed a further 32 laps while Jérôme added another 33 laps to his tally, achieving a total of 110 laps between them both.

Timo Glock - 1.36.940 - P19: “This morning we wanted to focus on our aero program and therefore we didn’t do any real set-up work, so we only used the Prime tyres, which are slower than the two soft options. I think the second session was reasonable for us. I’m not 100% happy but I think it was a good start to the weekend. I felt comfortable in the car and I’m very happy to be in Germany and racing at home in front of the fantastic German fans.”

Jérôme D’Ambrosio - 1.37.313 - P21: “It was a smooth Friday, certainly in comparison to Silverstone where we were disturbed by the weather. We got some good testing done and I’m quite confident for tomorrow. I still need to fine-tune my driving to the track but I’m definitely pretty happy about today.”

John Booth, Team Principal : “The morning session was spent in part going over some old ground, confirming the engine mapping direction to ensure we were getting maximum aero performance. We also experimented with some set-ups which we arrived at from the data we collected at the straight line test. There is certainly quite a significant difference between the Prime and Option tyres, particularly at the start of the run, and in fact with Timo we opted not to run the Prime tyres in the second session to get more useful set-up work. At the end of the session we’ve acquired even more data than we would normally achieve on a Friday to go through, which we are hopeful will yield some improvements that we can apply overnight.”

Lotus Renault GP

Nick and Vitaly unleashed on track a raft of revisions to the R31 in Friday’s FP1 and FP2 sessions at a rather chilly and cloudy Nürburgring to end the day with both cars inside the top ten.

Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer: "Nick ran a rearward exiting exhaust for the first time on the R31 and a complementary rear floor. Vitaly ran a new front floor and front wing. Vitaly suffered from a water leak in FP2 necessitating a change of radiator. We ran with both the soft and the medium Pirelli tyres. Due to Vitaly’s water leak and Nick’s exhaust evaluation we did not run a high-fuel long run. We are on a steep learning curve with the rearward facing exhaust and made strong progress through the two sessions. There were no issues with balance and we have a good baseline set-up here with both car configurations. We have a lot of data to digest for determining which exhaust configuration we will use for qualifying and the race. We had good running time."

Nick Heidfeld - 1.33.098 - P8: "These were two important sessions for us as we were able to try the new exhaust and diffuser. We had no technical issues which enabled us to work through a lot of our planned programme so we can now make a decision of where to go next with it. As I was evaluating the new parts I did a lot less balance work than I would have down otherwise. We also didn’t do a high-fuel long run which we would normally as we focused on learning as much as we could with the new exhaust and floor. Even though it’s quite cool the soft Pirellis are heating up pretty well so there were no problems in that regards and there was the usual difference between the two compounds. There’s now a lot of work to see what we do with the floor and what happens with the weather. It was good that it was dry today but the forecast doesn’t look as good for the next two days."

Vitaly Petrov -133.138 - P9: "I was pleased with today. We did a lot of aero testing and worked on a number of set-ups. It was my first time on this circuit so I needed some time to get know it and understand how to drive here. Set-up wise, we are not far away from a good car, even after our running was interrupted by a radiator leak which cost us a little bit of time in second practice. The soft tyres had more grip than we experienced with them previously. All in all, we were pleased with progress."