20/07/2007
NEWS STORY
It has been a promising start to the BMW Sauber F1 Team's home race. Both Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica had trouble free practice sessions in preparation for the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Heidfeld was fourth and ninth and Kubica fifth and tenth. The Eifel region welcomed Formula One with its typical changing weather conditions. After the first practice there was a heavy thunder storm at lunch time. Later the wind changed direction by 180 degrees so by half way through the second session the circuit had dried.
Nick Heidfeld: Our Friday went well, even better than expected before the weekend. In the first session especially we were strong. In the second session the balance of my car wasn't as good, although we didn't change a lot. It was down to the track conditions – the rain had washed the rubber away and the wind had changed direction. But as usual the second practice session never really demonstrates our true performance. I think we have a good basis to work from.
Robert Kubica: The day was quite okay but the weather was so so. The track was a bit wet for the first half an hour of the afternoon session, but then it dried. We did tyre evaluation in the morning and then in the afternoon worked on the set-up, mainly doing research to get the right balance of the car as it is a big change from the last two races.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): Overall we are happy with today's work. Due to the weather conditions we split the programme and did more running in the morning than we would usually do. We concentrated fully on race preparation and have done the majority of the work needed for this. Both drivers completed a lot of laps without any problems. Tomorrow morning we will be preparing for qualifying, and also continue to fine-tune our cars' set-up to get the best out of both tyre specifications in the race. This was a positive start to the weekend.
To check out our Nurburgring practice gallery, click here