“We spent most of the time fine-tuning the car and finding the right balance, sorting out tyre choice. It has been a good day and we have plenty of data to study for tomorrow.”
Jarno Trulli:
“In general that was a smooth day, and I’m pleased with how things went. We still have some problems to solve on the car to be more competitive, but we made some changes between P1 and P2 and that made a big difference. It looked better and we made a good step.
“Obviously it is still Friday so it is difficult to judge, but we normally perform pretty well here so I’m confident we can bounce back after the disappointment of Melbourne. The only problem is that the rain can be very heavy and this weekend’s forecast is mixed; I would prefer a dry race, but we will have to deal with whatever weather comes our way.”
Heikki Kovalainen:
“That was a good, steady start to the weekend. The car feels pretty comfortable to drive round here, and we made good progress on the set-up for the race. The track surface had only recently been re-laid, and as a result it was constantly evolving throughout the two sessions. The conditions here are always very extreme with the heat and humidity, but this had no effect on the car’s performance, and I am pretty happy so far with how everything has gone.”
Nico Rosberg:
“The track is quite different here now because of the new asphalt, so in many ways I think everyone is starting from zero. From our point-of-view, it was a good step forward over Australia to get a full day of track running today.
“Performance-wise, the car seems pretty good straight out of the box here and I am pretty happy with what we [have] achieved. We tried plenty of things just to see what was what, but the track ramped up a lot in the second session in particular; that will make the set-up call quite difficult, but I am pretty satisfied with our work today.”
Robert Kubica:
“After I lost quite some time in the morning session due to a gearbox problem, we mainly concentrated on evaluating different downforce configurations and comparing the tyres in the afternoon. We now have a lot of data available, which we have to analyse and understand in order to make the right decisions for the rest of the weekend. We haven’t had much time yet to work on the set-up of the car, so there is more to come.”
Giancarlo Fisichella:
“We made a big improvement from the morning to the afternoon session. This morning there was a lot of understeer and then oversteer – it was really inconsistent but we made a big step forward and the balance was a lot better in the second session. It was more consistent and comfortable.
