05/06/2009
NEWS STORY
The lesson from the first day of practice for the Turkish Grand Prix is that everyone is closely matched, given that the first sixteen in the second session are all within just over seven tenths of a second. The F60s of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa covered a total of 118 laps, without encountering any technical problems.
Stefano Domenicali: Today's results are even more difficult to interpret than they usually are on Fridays. Apart from the normal unknowns relating to fuel loads and tyre useage, the track conditions also played a part, as they changed a lot during the two sessions. Having said that, we are reasonably happy with the work we did today, also taking into account our fuel loads. There is still work to do to improve the handling of the car, but all in all, I think we are going in the right direction.
Felipe Massa: The track surface today was very dirty, as could be seen by the number of off-track excursions. As for us, we concentrated on finding the best set-up for Sunday's race and it's difficult to say where we are compared to the rest. On top of that, everyone is very close in performance terms, so I think we'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to understand something. The harder tyres give little grip, as we expected, while the softer ones seems to suffer significant degradation, even though, as the track evolves, that situation should change. The new aerodynamic elements we have here are definitely not worth a second, but they are a small help, which when put all together, improve our performance.
Kimi Raikkonen: At this track, conditions change very quickly, so it is difficult to judge the performance of the various cars on the basis of today's results. The track is very dirty and, after making some changes to the set-up, the car seemed to handle a bit strangely, but then it was back to normal for my final run in FP2. There is still work to do on the car but I am confident: I think we will find the right solutions to be competitive tomorrow and on Sunday.
Chris Dyer: It was a rather complicated day, because of the track conditions, it being dirty and also because of the wind. We got through our programme without the slightest problem, concentrating on tyre choice for the race, finding the best set-up on the car and on evaluating new aerodynamic solutions which are making their track debut today. Both the compounds that Bridgestone brought here seem to be pretty critical in terms of grip, at least from what we could see today. But we know the situation will improve bit by bit as the track gets rubbered in. All in all, we are reasonably satisfied with what we've seen today. I think that again here in Turkey, we will be able to confirm the progress seen in Spain and Monaco.