|
The first
day of track action for the
British Grand Prix yesterday went
almost unnoticed as the
political side of the sport
took centre stage, but for
the drivers, engineers and
mechanics at Scuderia
Ferrari, it was
business as usual. Under
past rules, there would have
been a week long test at the
Silverstone circuit prior to
the race, but with the ban
on in-season testing,
acquiring data on Friday
takes on more importance
than usual, especially at
such a technically demanding
circuit. With this in mind,
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe
Massa racked up an
impressive mileage, with the
Brazilian completing 60
laps, exactly equivalent to
a British GP race distance,
and Kimi doing even more.
However, they ended the day
down in seventeenth and
eighteenth places and,
although some of the other
teams may well have been
running more new tyres and
with less fuel, both drivers
admitted this was going to
be a tough weekend: points
rather than podiums would
seem to be the more
realistic target for Sunday
afternoon.
While the
Brawn duo of Jenson Button
and Rubens Barrichello may
head the F1 Drivers’
classification at the
moment, they finished
fourteenth and sixth
respectively on a day when
the Red Bull Renaults looked
on top form, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber
topping both time sheets
today, the only men to break
under the 1m 20s barrier. A
surprising third, given the
Force India team’s
performance so far this
season, was Adrian Sutil,
while Kazuki Nakajima was
fourth for Williams ahead of
the Renault of Fernando
Alonso.
There are
many traditions surrounding
this event and of course one
of them has to be the
weather. So far, it has been
fairly benevolent and
although it is cold for
mid-June, thanks to a strong
wind, there has been no rain
so far and in fact the only
wet time predicted for the
weekend is tomorrow morning,
when rain is due to coincide
with the end of the final
hour of free practice,
leaving dry and warm
conditions for the
afternoon’s qualifying.
“It
is always difficult to interpret the
results of Friday free practice, as we
don’t know what schedule the other teams
are working to,” commented Stefano
Domenicali. “We knew the characteristics
of this track would not be ideally
suited to our car and now we have to try
and analyse all our data from these
three hours to see how to improve our
performance. We can expect a difficult
weekend, but we will do our best, as
usual, to bring home a good result.”
Felipe Massa: “I
am not very happy with the way these two
free practice sessions went. The track
was rather dirty and the wind also had
an effect. We didn’t manage to find the
right way to go to improve the balance
of the car. There is definitely a lot of
work awaiting us in preparation for
qualifying, where the most realistic
target at the moment is to get into the
top ten.”
Kimi Raikkonen:
“Difficult to say where we are in
respect to the others: we will have to
wait for tomorrow’s qualifying to find
out. Clearly, looking at today’s
results, we are definitely not in for an
easy weekend. The car’s not bad in terms
of balance, but doesn’t seem to be quick
enough. The tyres are the same as in
Turkey, but of course it is much cooler
here: on the first lap, the performance
between the two types is quite
different, but then over a longer run,
they tend to be similar. As predicted,
there’s a wind blowing on the track, but
it’s not as damaging as I’d expected.”
Chris Dyer: “We
had a few little problems on both cars:
nothing particularly serious but enough
to slow us down in completing the
programme we had planned for the two
drivers. We have various new components
on the F60 and now we will have to
analyse the car’s behaviour to try and
tackle a weekend that certainly looks
like being a tough one, in the best way
possible.”
First Session
F. Massa: 6th, 1.20.471,
23 Laps, chassis 277
K. Raikkonen: 14th,
1.21.179, 27 Laps, chassis 279
Second Session
F. Massa: 17th, 1.21.005, 37 Laps, chassis
277
K. Raikkonen: 18th, 1.21.132, 38 Laps,
chassis 279
Weather
First session: air 22/23°C, track 30/34 °C,
cloudy
Second session: air 25 °C, track 41/37 °C,
cloudy
|
