“Both drivers found good settings on their cars and we got a lot of data on the behaviour of the two types of tyre. Now we must prepare very carefully for qualifying, because we know how important it is to start from the front. All-in-all, we are satisfied with the way the first day has gone here in Sepang.”
Steve Clark [Honda – head of race and test engineering]:
“We came to Malaysia expecting very high temperatures, but in fact we have not yet seen the exceptionally hot weather we experienced in Melbourne. For the car it is the temperature that is critical for reliability.
“The driver has another issue – that of very high humidity, which is more difficult than heat alone since the body’s cooling is less effective. Dehydration is a real issue during the race, and they have to work hard at managing their fluid intake. The heat and the severity of the newly-resurfaced track are proving a challenge for the tyres, and we are seeing both fronts and rears overheating.
“So far the results look quite encouraging, [but] the balance of the car is not yet where we want it to be so we can still improve. However, the pace is quite encouraging, particularly on race fuel loads. Whilst it is perhaps optimistic at this stage in the car’s development, we hope to be challenging for a place in the final qualifying session tomorrow.”
Dieter Gass [Toyota – chief engineer]:
“This is the kind of Friday I really like – we went through our programme without any issues on either car. We also had a very good exchange of information between the cars on the set-up work, and we gained some interesting results which we were able to transfer from one car to the other. We collected all the tyre data that we wanted and Jarno had a very good long run at the end of the session.
