MARCH 10, 2011

Barcelona, day 3 quotes

Team quotes from the third day of testing in Barcelona.

Red Bull-Renault

Mark Webber (3rd, 1:22.466): "We had a good day again. The car was reliable, so hopefully the weather will stay dry tomorrow and then rain on Saturday, so we get a good week out of it! I feel I'm ready for the first race now and while, of course you want a good run at your home race, I don't want to jinx with it any forecasts. In terms of team preparation, it's the best we've ever had going into the first part of a season in terms of reliability. All the departments have done a sensational job in getting every aspect ready. Hopefully, we're not too far from our main rivals to start with and we'll just go from there."

Ian Morgan, Head of Race Engineering: "It's been a good week so far, with no major difficulties. The weather helped us out a bit as well. With track temperatures near 30 deg C, it was nice to finally get a bit of running in the kind of conditions we may see at some European races. All in all, a successful day and I think Mark's now pretty comfortable with everything. He has a good feel for the car and how the tyres work, which is more important than ever this season. Tomorrow, it will be Seb's turn to complete his pre-season work. We'll run through a similar programme to today and, as with Mark, try to get him as comfortable as possible with everything before we pack up for Australia."

Ferrari

Felipe Massa (2nd, 1:22.092):

Mercedes GP

Michael Schumacher (5th, 1:22.892): "We've had a very productive day and completed a reasonable amount of mileage. We were able to check and confirm a lot of things on the set-up of the car with the new upgrade package, and my initial impressions are certainly positive. We've worked hard on reliability at the previous tests and our priority now is to develop and fine-tune the car which we have done quite successfully today."

Williams-Cosworth

Rubens Barrichello (4th, 1:22.637): "We had two aims today; to work on new tyre runs and to carry out some long runs. The new updates on the car seem to have made the car more consistent, and I was happy with our long run pace compared to last week. There's still some work to be done to improve our performance on the first lap on new tyres."

Sam Michael, Technical Director: "After completing some checks and mapping work with the new aero package, we went through a range of mechanical set-ups today. We're seeing some quite positive signs and we're heading in a good direction. We did have a failure on a very high mileage, rear suspension component late in the afternoon, so we're analysing the data on that now."

Renault

Nick Heidfeld (6th, 1:23.541): "We spent the afternoon trying some different ideas with the set-up and we made quite a few improvements and learned some useful things. I ran on the medium and the soft tyres, and the car felt much better by the end of the day, but there is still a lot more work to complete before the last day of testing tomorrow."

Vitaly Petrov (8th, 1:24.233): "Unfortunately we lost some time this morning because we had a problem with the KERS so we couldn't do the longs runs we had planned. For the rest of the morning we did some brake work and continued getting more data on the tyres."

Alan Permane, Chief Race Engineer: "We ran both drivers again with Vitaly driving this morning and Nick in the afternoon. The plan was for Vitaly to do another race distance, but unfortunately our running was cut short with a KERS problem. For the afternoon with Nick, we concentrated on set-up work and ran the medium and soft tyres."

Force India-Mercedes

Adrian Sutil (9th, 1:24.334): "We carried on where Paul finished yesterday, running through our race weekend programme. The race simulation worked well in the afternoon including live pit stops and a safety car exercise to cover a few different scenarios that can happen during Grands Prix. The balance was generally OK, we identified some areas of performance where we can gain time and I'm looking forward to working on these tomorrow when I'm back in the car for the morning."

Dominic Harlow, Circuit Engineering Director: "The VJM04 covered a good mileage again today as Adrian carried out a race simulation together with some aerodynamic and set-up tests. The race team were also present again for live pitstop practice before the first race. We have a busy final day of testing ahead tomorrow as we look to complete the maximum preparation possible in this pre-season."

Toro Rosso-Ferrari

Jaime Alguersuari (10th, 1:24.779):

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer: "The warmer track temperature was definitely useful for the teams and for Pirelli, in terms of preparing for Melbourne. Also bearing in mind that the season gets underway soon, we have carried out a lot of pit stop practice runs, as clearly this will be a key element during races this season. In fact, over the past two days, we have completed a total of sixty pit stops."

Lotus-Cosworth

Heikki Kovalainen (7th, 1:23.990): "That was a pretty good afternoon for me. Jarno had some problems this morning with one of those things that's hard to predict but the team managed to get it sorted for the afternoon and we were able to work through the whole plan. I can feel it coming together well - we'll sort out the reliability and I think we are just where we want to be."

Jarno Trulli (12th, 1:34.485): "Obviously it's a bit frustrating that the gearbox issue cut short my time on track this morning, but we've now got some time back in the factory to fix the problems so I'm looking forward to heading to Australia and begin the fight with the midfield teams."

Mike Gascoyne, Technical Director: "A difficult morning for Jarno with the gearbox change. We had put a new 'box on overnight but saw a problem with it this morning so had to change it during the session. Unfortunately a water leak then meant that Jarno was not able to complete any real running, but this afternoon we made some real progress with Heikki. He was able to work through a program on the tyre options and the blown diffuser so after a tricky morning it was a very positive end to the day."

Sauber-Ferrari

Sergio Perez (1st, 1:21.761): "We did a lot of useful preparation work for the first race weekend. Although we could not complete the race simulation because of a technical problem, for me it was an interesting and positive programme. It was my last day of testing. I feel ready and I can't wait to race!"

James Key, Technical Director: "We have had an interesting day as we carried out qualifying practice and race simulation. In the morning we started off with some general set up work, and then went into a qualifying practice, which was the first time we had run the car on low fuel. This was also the first time for Sergio to go through all those procedures from Q1 to Q3. He did a good and controlled set of laps, setting a time of 1:22.042 minutes on soft tyres and 1:21.761 on the super soft compound. In the afternoon we started a race simulation, but unfortunately this was stopped early due to a KERS problem, which meant we could not complete the laps we wanted."

Virgin-Cosworth

Jerome D'Ambrosio (11th, 1:27.336): "Today we have had a much more positive day and it was great to get so many laps in and complete our programme. This is the second full race simulation I have completed now and having this opportunity to do four full days before the start of the season is very important. Tomorrow will be another exciting day for me and then we will have a good picture of where we are. It was also great to see Timo back today."

John Booth, Team Principal: "We have had a very productive day of running today, culminating in another positive race simulation programme using the tyre compounds we will run in Australia. As a result we have some excellent data to work with over the next couple of weeks to ensure we are in the best possible shape for the first race. Timo was with us for the day today and is on the mend and in great shape. It was good that he had the opportunity to be as close to the cockpit as possible - both in the garage with the team and observing the action from the pitwall."