11/09/2009
NEWS STORY
The results are difficult to interpret on this first day of free practice for the Italian Grand Prix, marked by Fisichella's debut at the wheel of a Ferrari.
Stefano Domenicali: First of all, I want to welcome Giancarlo, who today was finally able to drive the F60, after eight days of theoretical work with the engineers. Obviously, the team adopted a different approach to its work on the two cars: Kimi concentrated on race preparation, while Giancarlo worked on getting confident in the car. We completed a lot of kilometres which means we have plenty of data to analyse over the rest of the day. It's hard to know where we are compared to the others: the gaps are very small and ten kilos of fuel more or less can translate into a significant step up the order.
Kimi Raikkonen: Overall, I'm reasonably pleased with the way things went in these three hours of free practice and the initial impressions are good. There is still room to improve the handling of the car, which we hope to do in tomorrow morning's free practice. The new kerbs don't allow you to cut them with impunity, which is not a bad thing given the difficulty we have experienced in this area in the past. Our pace on a long run isn't bad and we will do our best to fight for a place on the podium. As for the tyres, the softer compound is definitely quicker, but it's also quite consistent in terms of performance.
Giancarlo Fisichella: I feel satisfied with this first day, which was particularly tough from a driving point of view. The major difficulties are in adapting to the different positions of the buttons and gaining confidence with the KERS. This morning, braking heavily at Ascari, I flatspotted the left front tyre and that meant I had to fit the softer tyres earlier than planned: I felt more confident with those and I managed to drive at a strong pace. In both sessions, we didn't go looking for performance and I had a lot of fuel on board. The potential is there to get onto the front few rows, but I need a bit more time to improve, especially in terms of braking and cutting the kerbs.
Chris Dyer: We can be satisfied with the result of the work we did with both drivers today. We completed our programme without any problems, concentrating on finding the best set-up on the car. We are pleased with the performance over a long run and, naturally, tomorrow morning, we will work on performance over the first lap, to prepare for qualifying. Giancarlo tackled the day's work without experiencing any difficulty and we are not worried about his lap time, because the fundamental thing is for him to get experience in the car and with the use of KERS.