Team reaction after day one in Barcelona (part 1)

Red Bull Renault

Sebastian Vettel: "We’ve got a few changes on our car, but I don’t think anything as significant as perhaps some of the other teams have. There’s a little bit everywhere on ours
and I think we’ve proved today that our changes work. I think the lap times are irrelevant from a Friday. It’s good to be fast, but I think the McLarens are quick here – I don’t think they were pushing hard this afternoon and I think it will be much closer tomorrow."

Mark Webber: "That was a good day for us – we had a smooth run, a nice P1 and P2 with no
interruption from the weather or things like that. The guys worked faultlessly in the garage, the driver did a little bit as well and it was a good day. Don’t read too much into the times; McLaren probably weren’t showing everything today. It was a very late night for the team last night, but a positive day today and hopefully we’re well prepared for tomorrow."

Mercedes GP

Michael Schumacher: "Today I felt much more comfortable in the car and feel that it is behaving more consistently. In my view, our upgrade is a step forward but we have to wait and see how big the step is as the other teams have obviously improved as well. Now we have to deeply analyse the data to get a better overview on the actual situation and as usual after the Friday practice sessions, it is difficult to estimate where you actually are in comparison to our competitors. We will only have the real picture after qualifying tomorrow."

Nico Rosberg: "It was a challenging day for me today and not where I usually end up after the Friday practice sessions. There are no obvious issues on the aero package but we went wrong on the set-up whilst trying something new. I am confident that we will make progress overnight and tomorrow we will be able to extract the full potential from the car."

Ross Brawn: "We had a reasonable day and covered a great deal of work to gather all of the set-up information that we needed with our upgrade package. Michael and Nico followed different programmes and therefore this evening we need to bring all of the data together and decide how we run the cars tomorrow. The new developments performed pretty much as we expected however all of the teams have moved forward here and the target is constantly moving. It looks like we have kept up but we still have to find more pace to compete right at the front."

Norbert Haug: "Our upgrade package for the start of the European season seems to work as anticipated and it was visible on track and on the timing sheets that Michael was quicker and felt more comfortable today than at the last race in China three weeks ago. Nico was less happy with his car today but the data after the session shows where we went in the wrong direction with the set-up so Nico should be back tomorrow to the strength that he showed in the previous four races. Our pace during the race simulations didn’t look too bad but there is definitely still quite a gap to the quickest cars. We will work hard to make another step tomorrow. Today it is not possible to judge whether the competitive order has changed compared to the last races but everybody will find out tomorrow."

Ferrari

It was a very busy day for Scuderia Ferrari. There were many new components to be tested by Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso, including the new management system for the blown rear wing, as well as the usual comparison of the two types of tyre brought here by Bridgestone for this Grand Prix. The overall outcome was positive: the programme was completed and now it falls to the engineers to draw the conclusions and define the configuration and set-up for the F10 for the rest of the weekend. There was also something really new on both cars: the logo of the committee organising the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of a United Italy. “It is an honour for us to have on our cars this logo which marks such an important date for the Italian people and for our country,” commented Stefano Domenicali. “We wanted to honour this event on behalf of the whole company. Back to the daily work on the race track, we can claim to be reasonably satisfied with what we saw today. It is always difficult to draw conclusions after the first two free practice sessions, but I think we can be in the hunt in both qualifying and the race.”

Fernando Alonso: “It’s always nice to race in Barcelona, in front of so many fans, even on a Friday morning: it is definitely a source of extra motivation for me to do well. We worked with different fuel loads, both for qualifying and the race. We are reasonably happy with how things went and with the performance of the updates we tried on track, but we will have to wait until tomorrow to really understand where we stand compared to the other leading teams. As for the new rear wing, we will decide this evening whether or not to also use it in qualifying and the race: the system worked well but obviously, despite the fact we have tested it on various occasions, we still lack a bit of experience before we can get the best out of it.”

Felipe Massa: “The updates we brought here have definitely allowed us to make a step forward in terms of performance, but other teams haven’t been sitting around twiddling their thumbs. We still have work to do to find the ideal balance on the car, because today it was not as good as on the last two days of the test we did here last February. Probably the track conditions are very different to what they were then, as is always the case on the first day’s running, but clearly we have to study the data carefully to understand which direction to go in, in terms of setting up the car.”

Chris Dyer: “We are very happy with the work we did today. We had a very complicated programme to run, with many new technical elements to test, both for this race and for the more long-term future. We managed it, which means we now have a lot of data to analyse. On top of that, we also worked through the usual preparation of the cars for qualifying and the race, including the comparison between the two types of tyre available. From what we have seen, we can expect the usual very close battle, both in qualifying and the race.”

McLaren Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton: “It was quite windy today, so, despite running right through our programme, we struggled a little bit, particularly at the end when we changed to the Option tyre and encountered a bit of traffic. The new parts have definitely given us a step forward, but we don’t yet know how big that step is compared to our rivals.

“Generally, however, the car doesn’t feel too bad. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make some further set-up changes overnight, too. Tomorrow we’ll just be focusing on our programme, pushing the envelope, and analysing everything we can to make sure we’re as competitive as we can possibly be.”

Jenson Button: “I think we’ve still got a little bit of work to do, to be honest. I didn’t get as much running done this morning as I would have liked because I hit something coming out of the pits – probably a small part of a car, which damaged one of my car’s bargeboards.

“This afternoon we embarked on some set-up changes that we thought were headed in the right direction, but I’m not sure if they were. So there’s a lot of work still to be done on both tyres – some of it is possibly set-up, and some of it is getting the tyres in their correct working range.

“This afternoon was a very tricky session. A few teams were already getting their cars to work well, so we should be able to get there too. But there’s a lot to be done this evening to figure out exactly why our car didn’t feel as we expected it to. I don’t think it’s an issue of the new components working or not, I think it’s more about not turning the tyres on properly, or not working them in the correct way.

“We’ve got a lot of data to go through, but I’m certain we can make some improvements and come back with a stronger car for tomorrow.”

Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal: “We certainly come away from today’s two sessions armed with a considerable amount of data to sift through ahead of third practice and qualifying tomorrow. Today’s uncharacteristically chilly weather, and the resultant difficulties we encountered in adapting the set-up to best suit the conditions, meant that neither Jenson nor Lewis felt entirely happy with their cars by the end of second practice.

“As a result, we’ll place even greater emphasis on an examination of the data before tomorrow. We’re confident that our car has the potential to be well suited to this circuit, and that this afternoon’s pace was not fully representative of our expected race performance.

“Finally, it was a very proud moment to see the Circuit de Catalunya and the people of Spain commemorating Jenson’s world title by inducting him into their Champions’ Avenue parade this afternoon. We’ve got some extremely happy memories of racing here, and we think both Jenson and Lewis are doing the very best possible job to ensure that we’re in the hunt for both 2010 world championships.”

Renault

Robert Kubica: We had a couple of small issues on the car this morning, so we weren’t able to collect much data. That meant we ran much more during the afternoon in order to evaluate the tyres and also try some set-up changes. At the moment, the balance is still a bit towards oversteer, so we will do some work overnight and try to improve things in the morning. But we have to see how the track evolves, too. Overall, from the times, it looked like a pretty normal Friday.

Vitaly Petrov: It was a normal day of practice for me and we worked through our usual programme of tyre evaluation and set-up work. In the afternoon, the weather changed and it was very windy, which had a big impact on the balance of the car and made it difficult to evaluate the set-up changes. I also suffered with quite a bit of oversteer in the second session. So there are still some things we need to work on tomorrow morning during the final practice session when I will concentrate on getting ready for qualifying.

Technical Debrief with Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer:

Track conditions and evolution: The track is used quite regularly so it was in a reasonable condition for the start of the session, although, like any track, it evolved during the day and picked up grip. In the afternoon, the wind picked up and there was a strong headwind on the main straight, which made it more difficult to assess things.

Position compared with other teams: It’s difficult to make a judgement until we’ve been over all the data, and, of course, we don’t know the fuel loads the other teams are running. My feeling is that we should be in our normal position so I don’t think the order of the teams has changed significantly.

Tyre performance: We’ve done short and long runs on both the prime (hard) and option (soft) tyres, and these are two tyres we are starting to know quite well because we have used them at the previous three races. The track is tough on tyres, especially the front left, but we still need to look over the wear figures to see how we’re doing.

General car balance: Robert complained of a bit of oversteer in the afternoon, which is unusual for the R30 because the car balance generally tends more towards understeer. A few changes have helped that, but we still have some more work to do tomorrow. For Vitaly, he struggled for grip today, especially on the option tyre, so there will be more work to do overnight to try and get him back to his normal position.

Force India Mercedes

Formula One’s European season got underway at the Circuit de Catalunya today with two free practice sessions ahead of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix. The Force India Formula One Team made good progress over the 90 minute practices, ending the day with both cars inside the top 12.

Tonio Liuzzi and Paul di Resta put the VJM03 through its paces in FP1, completing 19 and 21 laps to record the 15th and 13th quickest lap times respectively. Adrian was back in his regular car for FP2 as work continued on comparing the performance of the Bridgestone Potenza tyre options available this weekend and evaluating the new mechanical and aero updates introduced for this race.

Adrian posted the 10th quickest time while Tonio rounded off the top 12 with a best lap of 1:21.904.

Adrian Sutil: Today was a pretty good day. I sat out the earlier practice session but we got all the data we needed from the afternoon to be able to understand the tyre performance and how the new aero parts we have brought to the track affect our performance. Overall everything seems to be working well. We could do extended runs on both the hard and soft tyre compounds and I was quite happy with the balance on both. The soft tyres take a couple of laps to come in but when they do they seem to work quite well. I think we’re in good shape for tomorrow’s qualifying - I think we should be where we were in China or even higher.

Tonio Liuzzi: Overall today was good. In the morning we had a bit of a problem as I got a flat spot on my front right tyre on my first run. As we only use one set of tyres in this session, it affected the second run as it changed the balance of the car and we couldn’t really set a representative time or test too many things. In the afternoon though we did some good work on each of the runs with a few different settings with different fuel levels, so the way we need to go is quite clear. We are suffering a little with understeer so we have some changes to make for tomorrow but in general it’s not too bad. I think we will perform well in qualifying tomorrow.

Paul di Resta: Having had the experience of the first three races and having got more familiar with Adrian’s car, I think I started where I left off in China. I feel this time it didn’t take too long to get up to speed and we got some productive running, particularly in the early part of the session, which is when the track was slightly quicker. I got a better impression of the circuit and we ran through the schedule as planned, which included some baseline work and tyre comparisons: it was a good morning session.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: This weekend will be about qualifying position and the way the weather turns out to be on Sunday. Today’s programmes with Paul, Tonio and Adrian were trouble-free, and apart from relatively low grip levels we have had no significant problems. We tested some developments for future events together with the updates we have brought here, and once we’ve completed our usual analysis will carry this forward to tomorrow.