10/06/2011
NEWS STORY
The Canadian Grand Prix weekend got underway at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal today with Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg completing the first two practice sessions for the Mercedes GP Petronas team.
Two disrupted sessions saw a total of three red flags: one in the morning and two in the afternoon. The stoppages in P2 required the team to revise its programme to focus exclusively on high-fuel race preparation. Michael and Nico completed a total of 128 laps during the day - equivalent to over one and three quarter race distances. The day's fastest time of 1:15.107 was just two thousandths slower than the 2010 pole position time.
Nico Rosberg: "It was a positive start to the weekend, and we seem to have made some progress with our race pace. I felt comfortable with the car today and we completed a lot of laps despite the interruptions, which was good. The tyres are holding up well so it will be interesting to see the comparison once we start working on low fuel tomorrow. Overall, I'm quite happy."
Michael Schumacher: "We covered quite a lot of work today. Obviously we didn't do any times on lower fuel and just concentrated on high fuel due to the red flags shortening our programme this afternoon. That's why we are at the opposite end of the timesheets to this morning, when it looked encouraging for a weekend that we did not enter with the highest expectations. We will now sit and analyse our performance and hope for another encouraging day tomorrow."
Ross Brawn: "We've had a good day to start our Canadian Grand Prix weekend. Today's running was obviously interrupted with the various incidents, however we have focused very much on our race preparation, particularly this afternoon. The loss of track time meant that we did not complete any low fuel running, but from our long run work, the car looks reasonable."
Norbert Haug: "A good and productive first day for us here on the Ile de Notre Dame at this great track. In the afternoon we concentrated on race simulations with both types of tyres: Nico's times looked consistent in both cases, but for Michael there is still some more set-up work to be done. Nico's time this morning was comparable to the best times from the afternoon when the track in Montreal has more grip and is therefore usually quicker. Today was certainly one of our better Fridays. The weather forecast for tomorrow currently predicts a 75% chance of rain at 1300 when qualifying starts, and it is possible that this will be the first wet running of the weekend, because P3 should still be dry. Qualifying could therefore be even more interesting and challenging than usual; hopefully we can repeat our good form from today."
To check out our Montreal practice gallery, click here.