- After all this time? - Always.
08 Jun 2012
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton on topping both sessions; team mate Jenson Button on a frustrating wait in the garage; Felipe Massa on his continuing renaissance at Ferrari; Caterham’s Heikki Kovalainen on crashing out in the morning; and Williams’ Bruno Senna on doing the same in the afternoon. The drivers and senior team personnel report back on the opening day in Montreal…
читать дальше McLaren
Jenson Button, P1 - 1:16.347, 10th; P2 - 1:15.812, 9th
“Well, we certainly had a few issues today. We had an oil leak on my car in this morning’s session, so the mechanics had to take the gearbox off then put it back on. And then we found another problem, so they had to take it off again then put it back on again!
“They did a great job, but the delays stopped us from doing any high-fuel running or any set-up work simply because we had to get out on the circuit and get some laps in. It meant we didn’t put a set-up on the car that felt quite right. Still, as I say, I want to say a massive thanks to the guys for working flat-out to get everything fixed - they were fantastic. But I’m not too worried - the car has been working well and Lewis has been quick all day, so there’s a lot of good information for us to look at for tomorrow. I enjoy driving around this place, so we’ll be hoping for a bit more luck tomorrow.”
Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“Lewis performed extremely well today. His short-run pace was strong, and his long-run pace was excellent. For Jenson, clearly, today was rather more troubled, albeit through no fault of his own. He suffered an oil leak in this morning’s session which necessitated the removal and re-fitting of his gearbox. Then, prior to this afternoon’s session, we diagnosed another problem and as a result we had to change his gearbox yet again.
“Consequently, he lost a lot of running time today - and then, when we finally got him out onto the track with only 18 minutes of P2 to go, he encountered quite a bit of traffic and was unable to get a decent run in the few laps available to him. Still, hats off to his mechanics, who did a splendid job to remove and replace the back-end of his car, not once, but twice, today.
“But tomorrow, in P3, we’ll work on getting Jenson a good package with which to qualify, and we all know how brilliant he can be at this circuit. Last year he was superb here, as tens of millions of TV viewers worldwide won’t need me to remind them. Lewis, too, is always super-competitive here - he won this race in both 2007 and 2010 - and I’m sure he’ll approach tomorrow’s qualifying session with his customary confidence again this year.”
Ferrari
Fernando Alonso, P1 - 1:15.842, 4th; P2 - 1:15.313, 2nd
“I am rather pleased with the way things went this Montreal Friday. This morning, we concentrated mainly on evaluating some new updates, while in the afternoon, we worked principally on a comparison of the two types of tyre, looking for performance over a single lap and also to check the behaviour of the car with a lot of fuel on board. The first indications seem to be positive, but it is much too soon to draw any conclusions as Friday times should never be taken at face value. Now we must concentrate on analysing the data and prepare as well as possible for the rest of the weekend. The circuit named after Gilles Villeneuve is very similar to a street circuit, with the walls very close to what are normal roads. It therefore becomes very important to find the right reference points, especially in terms of braking points and how far one is from the walls, in order to put together both a quick lap and to drive smoothly over a long distance.”
Felipe Massa, P1 - 1:16.619, 12th; P2 - 1:15.410, 3rd
“It was a very positive Friday for us. We managed to do a lot of laps and, above all, test everything we had on our programme. Fortunately, the rain, and boy did it rain, arrived just after the second session had ended, so we managed to do everything properly. I think we can be happy with the fact that the updates we have brought here worked, even if it’s hard to give an instant assessment of how much of an improvement they have produced. In any case, the intention is to keep the car in this new configuration. The car seems to be well balanced and it seemed to me to be pretty consistent in terms of performance, even if, obviously, the track is not yet providing much grip, this being the first day of the race weekend. To sum up, this has been the best Friday of 2012: let’s hope that can continue through Saturday and Sunday as well!”
Pat Fry, Ferrari chassis director
“We had a lot of work to get through today and we were worried the rain might come, which could certainly have made life complicated. Fortunately, the expected storm hit immediately after the end of the second practice session, so that we were able to get through everything we had set ourselves to do. We brought two different exhaust configurations here: one was the one used in the last two races, the other represents our latest interpretation of the concept that was part of the car when it made its debut in Jerez. From what we could see today, the latter configuration seems to be positive in terms of performance even if, obviously, we need to analyse the data very carefully to make the right choices for the race. This track requires a rather different downforce level to those we have visited so far, so we also worked a lot on this front and, in this case also, we need to study the data we have acquired before making a judgement one way or the other. Finally, we had to check the behaviour of the tyres, especially the super-soft, over a long run: we did not manage to do that many laps and, also linked to this aspect is the unknown factor relating to temperature. In fact, the weather forecast for Sunday suggests an increase in track temperature of around ten degrees, which could completely change the situation compared to what we have seen today. Therefore there is a lot of work to do over the rest of the weekend, but at least we have got off on the right foot.”
Red Bull
Mark Webber, P1 - 1:15.897, 5th; P2 - 1:15.907, 12th
“It’s been a pretty good day. We thought there would be more mixed weather, but it didn’t come. We ran the super-soft tyre in the first session, which we thought was the right thing to do, but in the end it didn’t really rain in the second session. The programme was a bit compromised, but we still got everything done that we needed to. We’re pretty happy with where we’re at and I’m confident in the work we did with the car, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow. There are some quick cars out there, but we’ve seen that Fridays before this year - I’m looking forward to the weekend.”
Mercedes
Michael Schumacher, P1 - 1:16.264, 9th; P2 - 1:15.697, 7th
"Our work was pretty typical of a normal Friday, however we used the softer tyre this morning to make sure that we could complete our full programme in case of rain later on. This afternoon, we then concentrated more on the set-up and balance. I had a good feeling in the car but it's too early to make any predictions for the weekend so we will have a good look at all the data this evening and go from there. I really enjoy this track so it's nice to drive here again."
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:15.782, 3rd; P2 - 1:15.878, 10th
"We had a good day today, although the track temperatures were quite cold which should not be the same over the weekend. This made it a little more difficult to warm up the tyres, but we were able to collect some good data on our long runs and have a lot of information to look at. It's a great track here and I'm really enjoying being in Montreal."
Ross Brawn, Mercedes team principal
"We had a fairly full programme today and thankfully the forecast rain held off until after the end of P2 this afternoon. Our tyre usage sequence was a little different to a normal Friday as we were anticipating rain in the second session so we used the option tyre this morning. The engineers and drivers worked through the programme well, and we have some good long run data to look at this evening. There are still some areas to improve on the car but overall it has been a good start to the weekend."
Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"Our target today was to prepare ourselves for the race and therefore we mainly simulated race conditions during long runs. The lap times both drivers achieved looked quite consistent. Michael and Nico posted their quickest times today on the prime tyre as we used the options during our race simulations. We learned a lot about the behaviour of both types of tyres, which are the soft and the super-soft compounds like during the last race weekend in Monaco. Car number seven finished seventh today whereas number eight was 10th, so there is room for improvement tomorrow and on Sunday."
Williams
Bruno Senna, P1 - 1:18.762, 21st; P2 - 1:17.022, 17th
“It was a difficult day today. I had DRS issues during the morning session and have limited experience of this circuit so today was about getting my eye in and seeing how far I can push the car. Obviously I pushed too hard towards the end of P2 and hit the wall, which is disappointing. Nevertheless we have made some improvements on the overall package and tomorrow morning I can go out and try to fine tune the set-up to get a good result on Sunday.”
Mark Gillan, Williams chief operations engineer
“We had a mixed day today with Pastor completing his entire run plan, despite having to readjust the programme ahead of the first session due to the impending inclement weather conditions. Bruno's running was hampered in the first session with a fault on his DRS system which was rectified for the second session. Unfortunately Bruno made heavy contact with the wall during the second session. He is perfectly fine and the mechanics are now working hard to rebuild the car. We are happy with our long run pace but still have work to do to optimise the car for qualifying.”
Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen, P1 - 1:17.014, 15th; P2 - 1:16.562, 15th
“It was an okay day for us. We expected rain in the afternoon so we used the super soft tyres in the morning to make sure we could do some long runs, and we completed everything we needed to do today as the rain didn’t come until later. I’m not 100 percent happy with my setup and I think we’re missing a trick somewhere. It’s not a major issue, but I know we can go faster. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow, anything can happen and hopefully it’s a little warmer as that usually seems to help.”
Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
“In FP1 we attempted to condense the programmes of both FP1 and FP2 into a single session. The red flag period interrupted this somewhat. Some of the expected rain came before the FP2 session, but not sufficiently to disrupt running so we were able to complete a good number of laps, despite another red flag period. We evaluated our new Montréal specification rear wing and ran race simulations.
“Our base setup appears to work solidly, with the Montréal specification rear wing delivering the expected performance. We are still working on refining the setup to ensure both drivers are happy. Our position in the times does not reflect our pace due to the different programme we ran today.”
James Allison, Lotus technical director[b]
“We ran the option tyres in first practice with some high fuel loads. The rain held off so we ended up running just one set of tyres for second practice which is why our times looked a little bit slower than others’. Neither driver was 100 percent happy with their car, so we spent some time working with set-up changes. Romain felt his car was a little too biased to the front, but he was much happier with the changes made. Kimi paid attention to improving his car over the kerbs as it was a little bit too harsh to start with; steadily improving through the day. I’m confident our finishing positions in FP2 will not reflect where we’ll be in qualifying tomorrow.”
[b]Pirelli
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director
“The teams were disadvantaged by wet weather during free practice in Monaco a fortnight ago, and we think they were all quite rightly wary of this happening again. So we saw plenty of drivers on the soft and super-soft tyres right from the beginning of the first session, but without knowing which fuel loads the different cars were running, it’s quite hard to get a firm idea of their relative pace. Our initial findings suggest that there may be a difference of around 0.4-07 seconds between the two compounds, but as the circuit is evolving all the time, we will only be sure once we have analysed all the data. The fact that there was a red flag in both sessions simply goes to underline the difficulty of this circuit, with grip at a premium. Had the second session gone on for just a few minutes longer, we would also have seen the Cinturato intermediate and wet tyres coming out, so it emphasises just how unpredictable this race is. Under the circumstances, the teams will want to accumulate as much information as possible to cater for every eventuality. I am sure we will see plenty more running tomorrow morning as the teams continue to collect data and with the top 10 covered by just 0.619s we are surely set to see a very close qualifying session.”
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton on topping both sessions; team mate Jenson Button on a frustrating wait in the garage; Felipe Massa on his continuing renaissance at Ferrari; Caterham’s Heikki Kovalainen on crashing out in the morning; and Williams’ Bruno Senna on doing the same in the afternoon. The drivers and senior team personnel report back on the opening day in Montreal…
читать дальше McLaren
Jenson Button, P1 - 1:16.347, 10th; P2 - 1:15.812, 9th
“Well, we certainly had a few issues today. We had an oil leak on my car in this morning’s session, so the mechanics had to take the gearbox off then put it back on. And then we found another problem, so they had to take it off again then put it back on again!
“They did a great job, but the delays stopped us from doing any high-fuel running or any set-up work simply because we had to get out on the circuit and get some laps in. It meant we didn’t put a set-up on the car that felt quite right. Still, as I say, I want to say a massive thanks to the guys for working flat-out to get everything fixed - they were fantastic. But I’m not too worried - the car has been working well and Lewis has been quick all day, so there’s a lot of good information for us to look at for tomorrow. I enjoy driving around this place, so we’ll be hoping for a bit more luck tomorrow.”
Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“Lewis performed extremely well today. His short-run pace was strong, and his long-run pace was excellent. For Jenson, clearly, today was rather more troubled, albeit through no fault of his own. He suffered an oil leak in this morning’s session which necessitated the removal and re-fitting of his gearbox. Then, prior to this afternoon’s session, we diagnosed another problem and as a result we had to change his gearbox yet again.
“Consequently, he lost a lot of running time today - and then, when we finally got him out onto the track with only 18 minutes of P2 to go, he encountered quite a bit of traffic and was unable to get a decent run in the few laps available to him. Still, hats off to his mechanics, who did a splendid job to remove and replace the back-end of his car, not once, but twice, today.
“But tomorrow, in P3, we’ll work on getting Jenson a good package with which to qualify, and we all know how brilliant he can be at this circuit. Last year he was superb here, as tens of millions of TV viewers worldwide won’t need me to remind them. Lewis, too, is always super-competitive here - he won this race in both 2007 and 2010 - and I’m sure he’ll approach tomorrow’s qualifying session with his customary confidence again this year.”
Ferrari
Fernando Alonso, P1 - 1:15.842, 4th; P2 - 1:15.313, 2nd
“I am rather pleased with the way things went this Montreal Friday. This morning, we concentrated mainly on evaluating some new updates, while in the afternoon, we worked principally on a comparison of the two types of tyre, looking for performance over a single lap and also to check the behaviour of the car with a lot of fuel on board. The first indications seem to be positive, but it is much too soon to draw any conclusions as Friday times should never be taken at face value. Now we must concentrate on analysing the data and prepare as well as possible for the rest of the weekend. The circuit named after Gilles Villeneuve is very similar to a street circuit, with the walls very close to what are normal roads. It therefore becomes very important to find the right reference points, especially in terms of braking points and how far one is from the walls, in order to put together both a quick lap and to drive smoothly over a long distance.”
Felipe Massa, P1 - 1:16.619, 12th; P2 - 1:15.410, 3rd
“It was a very positive Friday for us. We managed to do a lot of laps and, above all, test everything we had on our programme. Fortunately, the rain, and boy did it rain, arrived just after the second session had ended, so we managed to do everything properly. I think we can be happy with the fact that the updates we have brought here worked, even if it’s hard to give an instant assessment of how much of an improvement they have produced. In any case, the intention is to keep the car in this new configuration. The car seems to be well balanced and it seemed to me to be pretty consistent in terms of performance, even if, obviously, the track is not yet providing much grip, this being the first day of the race weekend. To sum up, this has been the best Friday of 2012: let’s hope that can continue through Saturday and Sunday as well!”
Pat Fry, Ferrari chassis director
“We had a lot of work to get through today and we were worried the rain might come, which could certainly have made life complicated. Fortunately, the expected storm hit immediately after the end of the second practice session, so that we were able to get through everything we had set ourselves to do. We brought two different exhaust configurations here: one was the one used in the last two races, the other represents our latest interpretation of the concept that was part of the car when it made its debut in Jerez. From what we could see today, the latter configuration seems to be positive in terms of performance even if, obviously, we need to analyse the data very carefully to make the right choices for the race. This track requires a rather different downforce level to those we have visited so far, so we also worked a lot on this front and, in this case also, we need to study the data we have acquired before making a judgement one way or the other. Finally, we had to check the behaviour of the tyres, especially the super-soft, over a long run: we did not manage to do that many laps and, also linked to this aspect is the unknown factor relating to temperature. In fact, the weather forecast for Sunday suggests an increase in track temperature of around ten degrees, which could completely change the situation compared to what we have seen today. Therefore there is a lot of work to do over the rest of the weekend, but at least we have got off on the right foot.”
Red Bull
Mark Webber, P1 - 1:15.897, 5th; P2 - 1:15.907, 12th
“It’s been a pretty good day. We thought there would be more mixed weather, but it didn’t come. We ran the super-soft tyre in the first session, which we thought was the right thing to do, but in the end it didn’t really rain in the second session. The programme was a bit compromised, but we still got everything done that we needed to. We’re pretty happy with where we’re at and I’m confident in the work we did with the car, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow. There are some quick cars out there, but we’ve seen that Fridays before this year - I’m looking forward to the weekend.”
Mercedes
Michael Schumacher, P1 - 1:16.264, 9th; P2 - 1:15.697, 7th
"Our work was pretty typical of a normal Friday, however we used the softer tyre this morning to make sure that we could complete our full programme in case of rain later on. This afternoon, we then concentrated more on the set-up and balance. I had a good feeling in the car but it's too early to make any predictions for the weekend so we will have a good look at all the data this evening and go from there. I really enjoy this track so it's nice to drive here again."
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:15.782, 3rd; P2 - 1:15.878, 10th
"We had a good day today, although the track temperatures were quite cold which should not be the same over the weekend. This made it a little more difficult to warm up the tyres, but we were able to collect some good data on our long runs and have a lot of information to look at. It's a great track here and I'm really enjoying being in Montreal."
Ross Brawn, Mercedes team principal
"We had a fairly full programme today and thankfully the forecast rain held off until after the end of P2 this afternoon. Our tyre usage sequence was a little different to a normal Friday as we were anticipating rain in the second session so we used the option tyre this morning. The engineers and drivers worked through the programme well, and we have some good long run data to look at this evening. There are still some areas to improve on the car but overall it has been a good start to the weekend."
Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"Our target today was to prepare ourselves for the race and therefore we mainly simulated race conditions during long runs. The lap times both drivers achieved looked quite consistent. Michael and Nico posted their quickest times today on the prime tyre as we used the options during our race simulations. We learned a lot about the behaviour of both types of tyres, which are the soft and the super-soft compounds like during the last race weekend in Monaco. Car number seven finished seventh today whereas number eight was 10th, so there is room for improvement tomorrow and on Sunday."
Williams
Bruno Senna, P1 - 1:18.762, 21st; P2 - 1:17.022, 17th
“It was a difficult day today. I had DRS issues during the morning session and have limited experience of this circuit so today was about getting my eye in and seeing how far I can push the car. Obviously I pushed too hard towards the end of P2 and hit the wall, which is disappointing. Nevertheless we have made some improvements on the overall package and tomorrow morning I can go out and try to fine tune the set-up to get a good result on Sunday.”
Mark Gillan, Williams chief operations engineer
“We had a mixed day today with Pastor completing his entire run plan, despite having to readjust the programme ahead of the first session due to the impending inclement weather conditions. Bruno's running was hampered in the first session with a fault on his DRS system which was rectified for the second session. Unfortunately Bruno made heavy contact with the wall during the second session. He is perfectly fine and the mechanics are now working hard to rebuild the car. We are happy with our long run pace but still have work to do to optimise the car for qualifying.”
Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen, P1 - 1:17.014, 15th; P2 - 1:16.562, 15th
“It was an okay day for us. We expected rain in the afternoon so we used the super soft tyres in the morning to make sure we could do some long runs, and we completed everything we needed to do today as the rain didn’t come until later. I’m not 100 percent happy with my setup and I think we’re missing a trick somewhere. It’s not a major issue, but I know we can go faster. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow, anything can happen and hopefully it’s a little warmer as that usually seems to help.”
Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
“In FP1 we attempted to condense the programmes of both FP1 and FP2 into a single session. The red flag period interrupted this somewhat. Some of the expected rain came before the FP2 session, but not sufficiently to disrupt running so we were able to complete a good number of laps, despite another red flag period. We evaluated our new Montréal specification rear wing and ran race simulations.
“Our base setup appears to work solidly, with the Montréal specification rear wing delivering the expected performance. We are still working on refining the setup to ensure both drivers are happy. Our position in the times does not reflect our pace due to the different programme we ran today.”
James Allison, Lotus technical director[b]
“We ran the option tyres in first practice with some high fuel loads. The rain held off so we ended up running just one set of tyres for second practice which is why our times looked a little bit slower than others’. Neither driver was 100 percent happy with their car, so we spent some time working with set-up changes. Romain felt his car was a little too biased to the front, but he was much happier with the changes made. Kimi paid attention to improving his car over the kerbs as it was a little bit too harsh to start with; steadily improving through the day. I’m confident our finishing positions in FP2 will not reflect where we’ll be in qualifying tomorrow.”
[b]Pirelli
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director
“The teams were disadvantaged by wet weather during free practice in Monaco a fortnight ago, and we think they were all quite rightly wary of this happening again. So we saw plenty of drivers on the soft and super-soft tyres right from the beginning of the first session, but without knowing which fuel loads the different cars were running, it’s quite hard to get a firm idea of their relative pace. Our initial findings suggest that there may be a difference of around 0.4-07 seconds between the two compounds, but as the circuit is evolving all the time, we will only be sure once we have analysed all the data. The fact that there was a red flag in both sessions simply goes to underline the difficulty of this circuit, with grip at a premium. Had the second session gone on for just a few minutes longer, we would also have seen the Cinturato intermediate and wet tyres coming out, so it emphasises just how unpredictable this race is. Under the circumstances, the teams will want to accumulate as much information as possible to cater for every eventuality. I am sure we will see plenty more running tomorrow morning as the teams continue to collect data and with the top 10 covered by just 0.619s we are surely set to see a very close qualifying session.”
@темы: felipe massa, формула 1, kimi raikkonen, michael schumacher, mercedes, jenson button, сезон 2012, гран-при Канады, ferrari, mclaren