Team reaction after day one in Shanghai (part 1)

McLaren Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton: “We may have topped the timesheets in each session, but I don’t necessarily think today’s times make us the favourites for this race. The car does feel good, but our pace looks pretty similar to some of the other cars on long runs.

“Everyone talks about us having a straight-line advantage, but that’s not true – other cars have the same speed as us at the end of the straight. We’re a little bit quicker than some teams, but, equally, they’re able to run more downforce. It’s about getting a good balance – and we feel we’ve got that.

“We’re continuing with the good feeling we felt in Malaysia, but we’ve made some further subtle changes and they were encouraging. I come out of today with a positive feeling – we’ll now keep our heads down and concentrate on gaining a strong qualifying position tomorrow.”

Jenson Button: “Today’s been good. This afternoon was a little frustrating: on my new-tyre run I ran into traffic – which you seem to get in every session – but the actual work we’ve done, and the direction we’ve taken, has been positive. There are a few more things we need to do, but we’re almost getting the maximum out of the car – especially on the long runs.

“We’re moving in the right direction. There are a few things we can still tweak over the course of this evening, but I think we’ve come here with a pretty good car from lap one.

“Of course, some of the teams haven’t shown their hand yet, but you can tell from the long-run times that they’re competitive. Maybe we’re not on their pace yet, but we’ve got tonight to make further improvements to the car.”

Martin Whitmarsh: “A successful day for Jenson and Lewis – they were both happy with the balance and performance of their cars. We’re aware that some of the other teams have yet to show their true pace, but we’re confident that we’ll be able to maintain the positive progress we’ve been making over the past few races.

“Our aim for this weekend is further to improve our performance in qualifying and also to enjoy a trouble-free race in order to pick up the maximum possible points – in that respect, we feel we’ve got off to a perfect start.”

Mercedes GP

Round four of the 2010 Formula One calendar takes place this weekend in China with the first of the practice sessions getting underway today at the Shanghai International Circuit.

The MERCEDES GP PETRONAS pair of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg finished the morning session in second and fourth places having focused on developing the mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of their MGP W01 cars.

The afternoon session saw further work on set-up and a tyre programme with the soft and hard compounds in use at Shanghai this weekend. Nico and Michael again finished the session in second and fourth positions having completed 39 and 42 laps respectively over the course of the day.

Nico Rosberg: “We made good progress on the set-up over the course of the day and tried some new directions which all seemed to work ok. I did lose a little bit of balance with too much oversteer at the end of the afternoon so we need to look into the reasons for that. The long runs were pretty good on my side and with the work that Michael completed, we should be in a good position on our tyre evaluations. The pattern looks pretty similar to Malaysia in terms of our pace compared to other teams but we’ll have to wait and see how it works out tomorrow.”

Michael Schumacher: “Today’s practice sessions went better than I had expected. The handling was pretty much ok and it seems that we have made a small step forward. We brought some improvements here including the new rear wing which have helped. So I am quite confident for the rest of the weekend even if the overall ranking will not change much from the first three races. I was a bit unlucky this morning as I had a puncture on my rear left prime tyre so we had to use one from the afternoon’s allocation. That meant I only had three new tyres in the second session but it worked out fine in the end.”

Ross Brawn: “Generally a positive day and initial evaluations are that we have made some progress with the car. As we know the two tyres well now, we focused more on the mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of the car today. We are not quite there with the balance over the entire lap but Nico and Michael achieved some respectable lap times. We are improving step-by-step but there is a long way to go and we won’t be happy until we can consistently compete with the cars ahead.”

Norbert Haug: “A very busy day today with a lot of learning for us. Our lap times in race trim did not look too bad in my view and both Nico and Michael have been reasonably quicker with lesser fuel. Having said that, I am not expecting that a lot has changed in terms of performance amongst the teams since the Malaysian Grand Prix a fortnight ago. We still have some fine tuning to do in tomorrow’s third practice session and I hope we can make a further step forward from today.”

Red Bull Renault

Sebastian Vettel: “That was good, we had no big issues and the car was working fine. We did quite a lot of laps so it was a solid day. It looks very close; the Mercedes look competitive, as well as the McLarens and Ferraris. It will be tight tomorrow, but we will see. I had a good race here in 2007 when I finished fourth for Toro Rosso and then last year with the victory, so there are a lot of good emotions and memories attached to this place.”

Mark Webber: “That was pretty good; it was our first really clean Friday, which was encouraging. We have a lot of stuff go through tonight about how the tyres are round here – it’s the first track where they are behaving a little differently to other venues. I think qualifying is going to be tight again and there’s supposed to be a bit of moisture floating around on Sunday afternoon, so it looks like the fans will yet again be given an action packed race. I’ll look forward to the challenge and to getting something out of it.”

Force India Mercedes

Free practice for Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix got underway today at an unseasonably chilly Shanghai International Circuit. The Force India F1 Team nevertheless pushed on with its programme and was able to complete its schedule of tyre evaluation and baseline set-up work.

Adrian Sutil was a promising ninth in the morning and as the afternoon saw a marginal improvement in grip levels, bettered his time to record the seventh best lap.

Paul di Resta, celebrating his 24th birthday today, was back in action in FP1. With this being Paul’s first visit to Shanghai his focus was initially to learn the circuit and then establish a baseline set-up for the weekend. Tonio Liuzzi took back the VJM03 for second practice and closed the day with the 16th best lap after difficult runs on the softer tyre compound.

Adrian Sutil: It was quite a good day, with no real problems. The track conditions were not very good out there to start with. It was very green and hard on the tyres, particularly the harder set we used in the morning. The grip improved over the day but even at the end it was still very low. The balance of the car was good though and I think we looked pretty strong on both types of compound so, with this in mind, I’m expecting a similar qualifying and race performance to Malaysia.

Tonio Liuzzi: It was difficult out there today. The prime tyre, which was my first run of the day, was good. The car was behaving well but then after we changed to the soft tyre we were sliding all over the place and struggling to get the temperatures in the tyres. It was a big frustration as the car was not there any more. It was strange as it was such a clear change from hard to soft. We need to look into this problem but I think we can be positive about the rest of the day as on the hard tyres we seem to be quite strong.

Paul di Resta: It was a very difficult session as the conditions were quite tough out there. The track was green with little rubber to start with and the low temperatures and the hard tyre compound made grip levels very, very low. I still managed to learn a few things about the car and of course the circuit. It’s a tricky track with some blind corners and variety of speeds and it’s hard to get into an easy rhythm straight away. Unfortunately I flat-spotted one of the front tyres, which compromised how much I could get out of the last two runs but we still got what we wanted out of the session and I have learnt another track so, all in all, it was productive day.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: Sunny but still quite cold today. The early track grip has been low, and the tyres a little difficult to warm-up, that’s all as expected really. We have a reasonable balance, but need to work hard to get the grip. With Paul driving Tonio’s car in FP1, we ran our usual combination of tyre evaluation and set-up programmes between the three drivers, and apart from a couple of small issues in FP2 and the bigger bumps this year, it was a reasonably smooth day

Toro Rosso Ferrari

Sebastien Buemi: “There’s not much to say about what happened in FP1. I braked, the wheels came off and that was it. Physically, I was fine though. But I have to say, I am extremely disappointed that, once again, through no fault of my own, I have been unable to run for almost all of the three hours available. I will have to try and catch up on Saturday morning and we will be relying on Jaime’s data from today to see which way to go.”

Jaime Alguersuari: “Another new circuit for me: it’s impressive, tough and technical but enjoyable to drive. Today went well for me, as we completed a lot of work, trying different fuel loads and working on set-up, as well as a tyre comparison. The hard tyre definitely takes a lot longer to come up to temperature, while the soft tyre seemed to work very well for us and should be good in the race. We still have work to do to improve tomorrow, but I am happy with what we have achieved so far.”

Giorgio Ascanelli: “Sebastien’s accident this morning was down to a technical problem on the right hand upright, which proved simple to identify once we got the car back. We have resolved the problem, which the many laps completed by Jaime this afternoon confirms. Sebastien’s FP1 session was interrupted shortly after the start because of a fluid leak around the pedal area, which we discovered after his installation lap. Apart from the upright, the afternoon accident caused some damage to the gearbox and a combination of fixing this problem and changing the front end meant that, despite the best efforts of the mechanics, we could not get Seb out before the end of the day. Fortunately, Jaime did a lot of laps in a trouble free session, after we had stopped him as a precaution towards the end of FP1, until we had identified the problem on his team-mate’s car. For his debut on this circuit, Jaime did quite a good job today.”

Renault

Robert Kubica: The first session was not especially productive for us, but in the afternoon we made some changes and found a better direction and a more normal balance with the car. We managed to get through most of our programme with some set-up work and a couple of runs for tyre evaluation. We still need to improve the overall balance of the car because we are still lacking overall grip, especially on low fuel runs, but the car felt much better on heavy fuel.

Vitaly Petrov: It was a good day of practice for me with no significant issues with the car. We spent most of the day trying some different set-up options and analysing the new parts, and it feels like the car has improved. I’m quite happy with the overall balance but we are still missing some grip, so we need to look over the data tonight to see where we can improve.

Technical Debrief with Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer:

Track conditions and evolution: The track was very low grip today and a bit dusty, but conditions slowly got better during the day. Having said that, even at the end of the day we felt the circuit was still lacking grip, but the situation should continue to improve up to and through qualifying.

Tyre performance: We have the same specification of tyres here as at the last two races (the hard and soft compounds). Both compounds are performing reasonably well, although the hard tyre takes a little bit longer to warm up. The soft tyre seems a little bit quicker and will probably be the preference for qualifying.

General car balance: We had some issues in the first session with Robert when he had some oversteer and the car was lacking grip, but we made a change between the two sessions and he was happier with the car in the afternoon. He was particularly pleased with the balance during his longer, high-fuel run in the afternoon. Vitaly suffered from some understeer but the car was generally quite well balanced. He had an encouraging and trouble-free day, completing lots of laps and posting competitive times.