“It was too big a change to go back in the time available, so we have some work to do to understand what changed. We should be able to get the car back to how it felt in the morning, then I believe we have a good chance of getting through to Q3 in qualifying.
“It's fantastic to have the celebrations here, with all my family and the team, but on the track nothing changes. When I began my career back in 1993, I never thought that I would break this record, but now it really means a great deal to me.”
“The sessions ran without any incident on either car, which is always good,” summarised the Brackley-based outfit's head of race and test engineering Steve Clark. “The damp track at the start of Friday morning, the rain for the start of the second session and then the red flag caused by [Mark] Webber's crash of course meant we could not stick to the original plan. That was the same for everyone, though, and something we just had to deal with.
“With the disrupted sessions it has been more difficult than usual to gauge our speed relative to our competitors. However here we have the front wheel covers, which give a tangible performance gain, so getting one or both cars to a top ten qualifying position and from there a points' finish ought to be realistic targets.”
