Rosberg made his
F1 debut at Sakhir a year ago, stunning the paddock with his pace after spinning a decent grid position away at the first corner. Battling back from dead last, the young German secured not only the fastest lap of the race, but also his maiden points, with seventh position at the flag.
"I can’t wait to go to Bahrain," he admitted, "I really like the track and we did well there last year, and it also suited me when I drove there in GP2 the year before. I hope we will continue our current momentum - at the moment we have the speed, especially in the race, but I think we might have to work hard on set-up during Friday’s practice sessions. I expect a good weekend, but we must succeed in achieving what we missed out on in Malaysia."
For Wurz, the objective will be to open his
Williams account, having come close to doing so in Malaysia last weekend.
"Last year, we produced good lap times [in Bahrain], so I think it suits the car as well," he said, "The only thing we have to overcome is that we didn’t test there over the winter, so we will have a bit of catching up to do on Friday. But I don’t think it’ll be a problem. We have a new aero package for the race that I ran at the Malaysia test a couple of weeks ago. It worked well, so I’m optimistic that we will get the cars into the top ten if everything goes okay. That has to be our target for this weekend."
Scuderia Toro Rosso – Vitantonio Liuzzi (#18), Scott Speed
(#19):
After its low key appearance in Australia, when neither Tonio Liuzzi or, especially, Scott Speed was able to call on much testing experience with the STR02 to do themselves justice, Sepang provided more encouragement for Toro Rosso.
Speed only just missed out on making the second phase of qualifying, and joining his team-mate in battling for positions 11-16, but enjoyed a feisty race, in which he battled with the Hondas, Super Aguris and
Ralf Schumacher's
Toyota. Although good reliability throughout the field meant that performance yielded only 14th place, the American was happier with his weekend's work.
"We definitely made a step forward with the car this weekend, which is good," he said as he left Malaysia, "Our pace is better, even though we have a long way to go."
Liuzzi, meanwhile, took a disappointed 17th after an early clash left him at the rear of the field, but agreed that things were looking up for the team.
"I think it's a shame that Sato pulled a crazy move and compromised my race, as everything was going well,” he said, “But I collided with him and then that meant I also touched Scott's rear tyre and had to come in for a new nose. It was a shame, as I felt my race pace was really strong and we could have done a lot better in terms of the final result. The positive point is that we have improved our pace since Australia and for the next race we can be a bit more optimistic."
Toro Rosso, like
Super Aguri, will also be hoping that it can go racing this weekend without the distraction of protests being filed against its cars.
Spyker F1 – Christijan Albers (#20), Adrian Sutil (#21):
Spyker introduced a ‘significant’ aero upgrade for the Malaysian Grand Prix, unfortunately with both cars going out early on - Adrian Sutil on the first lap and Christijan Albers’ on lap 7, neither driver had much opportunity to show if the changes had made any real difference.
