“The car was starting to grip towards the end and we tried a few different set-ups. We come away from today with another good understanding of the car, and hopefully we can work on improving our speed tomorrow morning before qualifying.”
Anthony Davidson:
“It was a much more productive day today compared with any of the sessions in Melbourne. The car ran reliably and we got some constructive tyre work done between me and Takuma, and I am relatively happy with where we ended up balance-wise on the car. I worked well with my new engineer, Richard, who did a good job, as did all the car crew today.”
Martin Whitmarsh [McLaren-Mercedes – CEO]:
“With these back-to-back races at the start of the season, it is often difficult to keep up the momentum of our relentless development pace. Subsequently both drivers were evaluating several new parts on top of the set-up and tyre evaluation work that is customary during the Friday sessions.
“Despite the small gearshift problem on Lewis’ car this morning, we are pretty comfortable with the performance of the MP4-23 here. Obviously there is always room to improve and the engineers will be working hard this evening to find those extra tenths, but overall we are reasonably happy.”
Norbert Haug [Mercedes-Benz Motorsport – vice-president]:
“We did, as originally planned, a lot of laps today and Lewis, Heikki and their teams found a good set-up and achieved quick and consistent lap times on both types of tyres. However, this will probably be of little help for tomorrow’s qualifying and Sunday’s grand prix as the weather forecast is predicting rain, but we should be well-equipped in those circumstances too.”
Stefano Domenicali [Ferrari – team principal]:
“The start of this weekend is reasonably positive. Kimi and Felipe reckoned they were happy with the way the cars went, both over a single lap and on a longer run [and] with both types of tyre. From what we have seen and considering all the usual Friday unknown quantities, I think we will be competitive in qualifying and in the race.”
Luca Baldisserri [Ferrari – team manager]:
“This morning we got our lines of communication mixed up between the garage and the pit wall. That left Kimi stuck out on the track without fuel, but in the afternoon we were able to get more done, without any technical problems whatsoever.
