Vitantonio Liuzzi and
Scott Speed were both in upbeat mood after the opening day of the Bahrain Grand Prix meeting, claiming to have made further inroads into perfecting the STR02.
The Italian raised a few eyebrows when he ended the first of two 90-minute practice sessions inside the top ten and, while accepting that that would have been due as much to the vagaries of different programmes, was happy to have found some speed in the car.
"We had a good day overall, with no big problems on the car," he reported, "We worked mainly on evaluating the different tyres to see which to choose for qualifying and the race, and I am quite happy that the car seemed to respond very well to all the set-up modifications we made.
"Also, our pace was quite good today, which means we have made a little bit of progress since last weekend. The big step won't come until later though, so the important thing this weekend is to get as many kilometres as possible under our belt."
After a late start to his season, Speed has been playing catch-up in the development of his STR02, but felt that he had made a big gain since Sepang last weekend.
"The car definitely feels more competitive than it did when I drove it here in the pre-season test, but that's only to be expected," the American said, "More importantly, the car feels more competitive than it did last week in Malaysia. That's great news, as we did not really expect that.
"Now, we will have to see if that stays true for the rest of the weekend. We have made a lot of changes to the car set-up since last weekend. We are chipping away and learning more and more about the car, so this has been a useful day."
