"It was not so easy to find the right set-up today: we have understeer in some corners, but then oversteer in others. At the end of the afternoon when we were ready to try new tyres we had a problem on the rear wing and I just left the pits too late to get a good lap in, so we couldn't improve and do a good lap time. There are some small improvements with the new parts but we have some work to do overnight."


Adrian Sutil:

"The morning session was not great as the harder tyre was very hard and with the green track conditions it was difficult to get a balance. In the afternoon it was much better with the softer tyre and for the first time I could feel a real difference between the two compounds, which was a definite improvement. I am quite happy as now we know we can work with the tyres, we can improve tomorrow. It was a shame in the last corner that there was that incident with Alonso, but it happens. It seemed he lost a bit of downforce under braking and locked up the rear but it wasn't really a problem."


Takuma Sato:

"It was not an easy day. We struggled to get the balance right in the car as through the laps the balance was changing quite a lot and we did not have enough time to complete our evaluations or to develop the set-up. We are working with a tyre one-step softer than last year, so the comparison was interesting between the medium and soft tyres today, and both are working well. However, we need to work hard to get the car balance right for tomorrow."


Anthony Davidson:

"It was quite a tough day for everyone out there today with the cross winds. We managed to find a good race balance on the car, but we still need to work on finding a good balance for Qualifying tomorrow. I didn't get a clean run at all on any of my new tyre runs due to traffic, but that's not a worry at the moment."





Stefano Domenicali [Ferrari - team boss]:

"It was a good day, but it's too early to draw any conclusions regarding the final outcome of this weekend. We worked well, without any particular niggles and now we must concentrate on preparation for qualifying and the race."


Luca Baldisserri [Ferrari - technical director]:

"Track conditions this morning were rather difficult, because of all the sand blown onto the track by the strong winds that we had here over the past few days. In the afternoon, as the cars did more and more laps, the situation improved. We got through all our programme, working on finding the best set-up and on the comparison of the two types of tyre available to us. I reckon we can be satisfied with what we achieved in both these areas. Being able to refer to our February tests was definitely useful, but we have to bear in mind that the weather is different."


Sam Michael [Williams-Toyota - technical director]:

"We had a good first day's practice with no interruptions from a reliability point of view, and that enabled us to get through a full programme of set-up changes, tyre work and checking cooling and brakes. We will now work on qualifying performance for tomorrow."


Ron Dennis [McLaren-Mercedes - team boss]:

"Apart from Lewis's off towards the end of the second session, a good start to our Bahrain Grand Prix weekend. The track continued to improve throughout both sessions and we gathered a lot of data. As Bahrain is one of the most demanding circuits on brakes we monitored and evaluated our brake performance throughout. We experienced no problems and look forward to the rest of the weekend."


Norbert Haug [Mercedes - motorsport director]:

"We completed our preparation programme for Saturday and Sunday and the times in race trim are not looking bad. Lewis's crash luckily was not too hard - his team now have a lot of work ahead before Saturday but they will manage."


Willy Rampf [BMW-Sauber - technical director]:

"We are satisfied with the first practice day. We concentrated on race preparations and did the tyre comparison. Robert got used to the car right from the beginning, whereas Nick is not yet completely happy with the balance of his car. Now we shall concentrate on analysing the data, then the relevant changes will be adopted. We had no technical problems."


Pat Symonds [Renault - executive director of engineering]: