07/10/2005
NEWS STORY
Despite a light shower towards the end of the second practice, heavy rain held off during today's two free practice sessions. Clocking up 94 laps, David, Christian and Tonio set some competitive times aboard their RB1s, with David setting the fifth fastest time overall. Unfortunately 10-minutes into the second session, Tonio suffered an electronic and hydraulic problem, which brought his practice to an early end.
David Coulthard: Considering we ran a normal Friday programme today, our performance this morning seemed to be pretty good. Fourth fastest is not too bad at all. Of course, we still have to do Saturday and Sunday to complete the cycle, but we certainly seem to be more competitive here than we have been at other circuits this year.
Christian Klien: We thought it might rain this afternoon, so we did most of our running this morning, just to ensure we knew what the situation was regarding tyre choice and car set-up. Fortunately, it stayed dry for most of this afternoon, so we were able to have another look at the tyres. The car felt good to drive and we were quite competitive. However, as always on a Friday, it's difficult to judge exactly where we are overall from the times. I'm looking forward to racing here; Suzuka is quite a tricky circuit, with lots of direction and elevation changes. That, together with the fact that it might rain this weekend, should make things pretty interesting.
Tonio Liuzzi: We were not so far from the overall pace this morning, which was pretty good, as this is one of the hardest circuits to learn on. There are lots of technical corners and how you leave one corner affects how you start the next. When you have four corners one after the other, it's important that you know exactly where to put the tyres, while also finding a good rhythm and speed. The more you know about the circuit, the better you go here I think, but I was pretty happy with my performance today. The car had good balance and everything was positive. It's a shame I hit traffic on the first lap as I could have been four or five tenths quicker there I think. In the second session, we had an electronic and hydraulic problem and had to stop. It was a shame, as I was set to complete a long run to evaluate the tyres. I think we should have enough information from the first session, but it definitely would have been good to get more kilometres on this circuit.
Paul Monaghan, Head of Race and Test Engineering: Unfortunately Tonio's car suffered an electrical and hydraulic problem in today's second practice session, which bought his session to an early end. The two issues appear to be unrelated to one another, with the electrical problem occurring first and the hydraulic one developing afterwards. Fortunately, we acquired a lot of tyre data in the morning session and will now analyse that ahead of tomorrow.