|
Kimi Raikkonen quickest, with Felipe Massa
in second place, just 0.125 seconds slower than his Scuderia
Ferrari team-mate. That was how the time sheet
looked in Malaysia at the end of the opening day’s second 90 minute free
practice session. Therefore, after the very unusual time
sheets we had seen throughout the Melbourne weekend, could
it be the case that the old order has returned to Formula 1,
given that the Brawn GP cars, for whom the word dominant is
not strong enough to describe their Australian performance,
ended today in sixth and seventh places.
No, it would be wrong to say that everything
has changed, given that the top fifteen cars ended the day
within the same second and therefore, even allowing for
different fuel loads, everything looks very close. The
Sepang circuit is definitely a more traditional venue than
Albert Park and the large differences seen in Melbourne
between the two types of tyre on offer from Bridgestone have
not been repeated here: performance between the softer and
harder compounds are more similar and more importantly, the
softer option seems to have a longer life than was the case
in Melbourne. In short, while the Ferrari F60 seems far more
competitive here, it is still too early to say what might
happen over the rest of the weekend. Reliability issues had
added to the Scuderia’s difficulties last Sunday and today,
Kimi’s KERS played up, losing him some running time, while
Felipe had a trouble free day.
Third and fifth fastest today were Sebastian
Vettel and Mark Webber, with the Williams-Toyota of Nico
Rosberg providing the meat in the Red Bull sandwich in
fourth place. Heavy rain again hit the track this afternoon,
at around the time that tomorrow’s qualifying session –
which gets underway at 5 local time – is due to end. The
tropical Malaysian weather might yet again be a major player
this weekend.
“These three hours of free practice
would seem to offer a different view of the situation to the
one we saw in Australia, which indeed was predictable given
the characteristics of the two circuits,” commented Scuderia
Team Principal, Stefano Domenicali. “Obviously, it’s much
too early to say what is our level of performance when
compared to all the other teams, but it is clear that it
very finely balanced, given that the first fifteen in the
second session are all covered by less than a second.
Reliability remains the main priority: again today we had a
technical problem which, if it had happened in the race,
would have led to a retirement. Having said that, we must
remain focused and calm, while allowing ourselves to look
forward to the rest of the weekend being aware that we will
have to fight hard to bring home a good result.”
Kimi Raikkonen: “This morning we had
a problem with the KERS, which cost us a bit of time, but we
managed to make up for most of it in the afternoon. We had
felt that the situation here could be different to
Melbourne, but it is still too early to say where we are up
against the opposition. What we can be sure of is that when
the car runs trouble-free, we are competitive. We hope we
can do a good job in tomorrow’s qualifying.”
Felipe Massa: “The situation seems
different compared to Australia, at least in terms of how
the tyres operate. There is more grip and the softer tyres
work well, even over a long distance. At the start of the
long runs, I had a bit of understeer in the high speed
corners and oversteer in the slow ones, but towards the end,
the handling of the car improved continuously and I could
set some great times. Clearly, looking at the time sheet
today, there’s a slight feeling of relief, even if it has to
be treated with caution: we are very motivated and the whole
team will be trying its best.”
Luca Baldisserri: “This morning we
experienced a short circuit in the kinetic energy recovery
system fitted to Kimi’s car, which cost us a bit of time,
but it didn’t compromise our completion of today’s
programme. The main aim was to understand how the two types
of Bridgestone tyre we have here perform, both over a single
first lap and over a distance. From what we have seen today,
the situation seems very different to what we experienced in
Melbourne, especially when it comes to the consistency of
performance from the softer compound. From this point of
view, it’s been a good day, but we have to work very
carefully on every detail when it comes to the reliability
of the car.”
First Session
F. Massa: 2nd 1.35.832 38 laps chassis 275
K. Raikkonen: 18 1st 1.35.707 40 laps
chassis 276
Second Session
F. Massa: 2nd 1.35.832 38 laps chassis 275
K. Raikkonen: 1st 1.35.707 40 laps chassis
276
Weather
First session: air 29/33 °C, track 33/41 °C,
sunny.
Second session: air 33/29 °C, track 41/33
°C, cloudy.
|
