Formula 1

ABU DHABI GP – FRIDAY PRACTICE

Car 1, Sebastian Vettel

“I think we can be happy with today. Overall we got a good lap on the soft tyres, but in general pace the McLaren’s were quick and seem competitive, so they’re the ones we need to look out for and beat. We need to improve the car overnight to qualify as high as we can tomorrow.”  

Car 2, Mark Webber

“We had a KERS issue, which wasn’t the same as last week. It never helps to miss some running on the track during practice, but it’s not a big deal. The track will move around a little bit from where it is now, but not a huge amount; it’s in pretty good shape straightaway. We’ll get it fixed tonight and come back tomorrow.”

Nico Hulkenberg (VJM05/03)

FP1:     P12      1:45.587            20 laps

FP2:     P13      1:43.255            34 laps

Nico: “I think it’s still difficult to know where our performance level is right now, but we probably need to raise our game and improve a bit overnight if we want to challenge for points. The balance is not perfect just yet so we need to work tonight to get the car closer to the sweet spot. Apart from that we got through the programme, collected all the tyre data and so it was a fairly normal Friday.”

 

Paul Di Resta (VJM05/04)

FP1:     Did not take part

FP2:     P15      1:43.578            34 laps

Paul: “I think we learned quite a lot this evening, but there’s a lot of work ahead of us to understand where we stand and where we can improve. This track is all about grip in the low and medium speed corners and that’s where we need to focus tonight. In terms of tyres we collected a lot of data today so we will be working hard to make sure we get them in the right operating window for qualifying and the race.”

 

Jules Bianchi (VJM05/04)

FP1:     P15      1:45.769            22 laps

FP2:     Did not take part

Jules: “It think this was probably my best free practice session so far. I’ve done lots of testing here before so I know the track really well and felt very comfortable. The programme was quite simple with three runs, lots of laps and we improved the car with each run. The track improved a lot during the session, but the tyres went off quite quickly so it was difficult to improve my times at the end of the session.”