11/10/2013
NEWS STORY
It was anything but a typical Friday for the Team today, as the full weight of the free practice programme fell to Max Chilton following an 'off' for Jules Bianchi in FP1 this morning.
Jules had completed just 8 laps of the opening session when he lost control of his car on the exit of Turn 9, one of a few drivers to crash out of the free practice sessions in what has been a day of unusual attrition.
Once the car was returned, an initial visual inspection of Jules' chassis pointed to impact damage which is repairable but not in sufficient time for him to take part in this afternoon's session. As the Team carries a spare chassis, it made sense to focus their efforts on building up a 'clean' tub overnight rather than expending extra time rebuilding a damaged chassis, in order to guarantee Jules' participation in Free Practice 3 on Saturday morning.
Max Chilton: "It has been really good to get my first taste of the mighty Suzuka Circuit today, but as we have seen, it is quite a tough track to get to grips with. From the early part of the morning session it was clear that setting the car up for this track and achieving a good balance was going to be quite a challenge. That challenge increased when Jules was unable to take part in this afternoon's session and we had to make every lap of data gathering count. I'm pleased with how my afternoon session went in terms of improving the car balance and my overall pace, so I'm looking forward to continuing this progress tomorrow."
Jules Bianchi: "It has been a tough day and with only 8 laps completed it is not the way I had expected things to go in my first sessions at Suzuka. My chassis was too damaged for me to take part in FP2 so the Team are building up the spare chassis and I will run again in FP3 tomorrow morning. We have a lot of work to do now - me with my engineers and also for the mechanics building the car up for tomorrow - so all we can do is work hard and hope for a better day tomorrow."
John Booth, Team Principal: "It has been a testing Friday for us here at Suzuka but we have seen some positive signs in terms of our performance. Unfortunately Jules had an off in Free Practice 1 but at that stage his time was competitive and would still have been a good time had he set it in FP2. Unfortunately he was unable to take part due to his damaged chassis and so Max had to do the lion's share of the work today. He worked well with his engineers to complete the obligatory tyre evaluations and improve the car balance and we are happy with his pace. Although we have less data than normal we will go through the information we have gathered in detail to ensure that when we are able to get both cars out on track tomorrow morning we can quickly move forward."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.