25/11/2011
NEWS STORY
Timo Glock and Jerome D'Ambrosio got Marussia Virgin Racing's last race weekend of the 2011 season underway today with the first two Free Practice sessions for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
With an air temperature of 26°C and a track temperature of 39°C, both Timo and Jerome got straight down to their respective programmes, with both of them completing their first 29 laps of the weekend.
In the afternoon the team continued to prepare for the race ahead. With the track temperature at 47°C, Timo and Jerome continued to fine-tune their respective set-ups as well as understanding the behaviour of the Pirelli P-Zero tyres. Timo added a further 45 laps to his tally and Jerome completed 39.
Timo Glock: "I had quite a normal FP1 and FP2 today. I struggled a bit with the tyres; their behaviour was a bit difficult and in terms of managing them right for a qualifying lap it is not easy. But in general today was okay, we were able to work through our programme. Now we have to keep an eye on the weather and decide what direction we want to take."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "It was a pretty good Friday. We went through the programme and we did everything we had to do, so that's good. In terms of performance the car isn't too bad, but I'm not happy yet with the balance, so we've got a bit of work to do tonight. I think the track is difficult for car balance and it looks like everybody is struggling with oversteer. So it's not easy, but I think we can work on that for tomorrow, although we have to bear in mind that the weather might not be as good tomorrow."
John Booth, Team Principal: "Both sides of the garage have had a good opening day in Brazil with the drivers and engineers completing the intended programmes with no issues. The prototype hard tyres which we ran at the start of each session appear to be a step forward from the current hard tyre and enabled the drivers to ease into the circuit and track conditions before using the intended compounds for this race. Both cars have tried various different set-ups today with some focused towards how a wet set-up would perform in the dry, since we are expecting changeable conditions for the remainder of the event. The long run pace on the soft tyre appeared to be pretty consistent and the degradation much lower than we predicted coming into this circuit. As with most other runners we seem to be experiencing instability at the rear and both cars need to dial in the balance overnight. Overall we are happy with the day and look forward to what the weather brings us for tomorrow and Sunday."
Check out our practice gallery, here.