28/06/2013
NEWS STORY
The opening Free Practice sessions of the British Grand Prix weekend got off to a wet start today and the Marussia F1 Team, in common with the rest of the field, were forced to treat the exhilarating, high-speed Silverstone Circuit with slightly more reverence in the prevailing damp conditions.
The Team's objective for today was to work with the prototype tyre whilst evaluating some new smaller mechanical and aerodynamic development parts. Max Chilton and Jules Bianchi were unable to achieve more than 15 laps between them, remaining on the Intermediate tyre. They ended the session in P9 and P10 respectively.
This afternoon, the Team were able to work through more elements of the programme and went on to finish P18 and P21, having completed 27 and 33 laps respectively.
Jules Bianchi: "It has not been an easy start to the Team's home Grand Prix but we kind of expected these conditions for today. Although we are not expecting any further wet weather during the weekend's running, we have made the best of things and used this opportunity to work on wet set-up generally for future races. I'm looking forward to some dry running now so we can really start to attack the circuit and see what we can do here. It's a fantastic track and it will be nice to get a better taste of that tomorrow."
Max Chilton: "Despite the tricky conditions, it has still been a great day here at Silverstone in front of the home crowd. The good news for them is that the weather looks set to pick up for the remainder of the weekend; but it's a testament to the dedication of the fans that they stick with it, even in the rain. I hope we can reward their support this weekend. The day got off to a slow start which set us back a little in terms of our programme, but we've made some good progress this afternoon, particularly with some more long-range set-up work in the wet. No doubt that will come in handy at a couple of the remaining European rounds. It will be good to tackle the circuit in the dry tomorrow and properly assess how the car will perform here."
John Booth, Team Principal: "The British weather made for a difficult start to our programme and required us to switch focus a little from our normal aero test in FP1 to wet set-up in general. At the start of FP2 the track was again wet, so with Max we opted to use the Intermediate tyres to continue with this work, however it became clear the track was too dry. With Jules, as the track condition was not suited to tyre work at the start of FP2, we did carry out some of our aero measurements in order to decide on parts which we have been looking to run for a few weekends. Both cars then completed a fairly typical programme with the slight difficulty of a rapidly improving track, however with the long run data under our belts we are sure we have gathered enough information to make the right decisions for the race. We are looking forward to what is currently looking to be a dry Saturday and hopefully tomorrow we will be able to focus more on our qualifying pace."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.