Friday Team Quotes

McLaren-Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton (2nd, 1:33.540): "It has been a positive session today. In the first practice the track was very dirty and slippery so there was no point spending too much time looking at the set-up. In the 2nd session we began our fine tuning and completed a couple of long runs. I think I was quicker and more consistent than previously in the long runs which is positive and there is definitely more to come. We now have quite a bit of data to look at but so far so good."

Fernando Alonso (5th, 1:33.784): "Two trouble-free practice sessions where we made positive progress. The track was very dirty and continued to improve throughout the session. We spent our time perfecting the set-up and evaluating the tyres. I completed some long runs and all in all I think we are closer to the Ferraris than we have been so far this season on a Friday but it's a long weekend so we will see what happens."

Ron Dennis, Team Principal: "A positive start with two trouble free sessions. We struggled slightly with the track conditions in the first session where it was extremely slippery, but managed to complete our programme. Our pace in the long runs is encouraging so we will see what the rest of the weekend brings."

Norbert Haug, Mercedes Motorsport Director: "An interesting Friday practice which saw the top-five in the second session finish within a quarter of a second. Lewis and Fernando each completed 50 and 45 laps respectively."

Renault

Heikki Kovalainen (12th, 1:34.585): "The final positions look worse than they did last week, but I think that the feeling about our competitiveness is much better. The car is better to drive than last week, and the changes we made definitely took us in the right direction during the two practice sessions. I am feeling more comfortable as well, so all in all I am quite happy. Tomorrow will be tough, but that is the situation we are in at the moment, and we will be fighting hard to get into the final round of qualifying."

Giancarlo Fisichella (15th, 1:34.796): "My long run in the second session was very consistent and the feeling with the car was good. And then, on my quick lap at the end, I ran wide, so I know there is more performance to come over a single lap. The car felt more consistent to drive, but it felt good on Friday last week as well - then we struggled in qualifying. So our challenge will be to produce a good level of performance tomorrow. It will still be a very close fight to get into the top ten, but I think we had a good day today, and hopefully that can help us to a better result tomorrow."

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: "Although we were disappointed not to make it into the final round of qualifying last weekend, we nevertheless felt it was the correct decision to continue working on the car while running high fuel loads. This appears to have been vindicated today, as we made some reasonable improvements to the car during the two practice sessions. The times for the entire field show that the grip levels are much lower than they were during the final pre-season tests, but the relative competitiveness of our long runs was quite encouraging. Overall, we can be reasonably satisfied with our day."

Denis Chevrier, Engine Operations Manager: "We last tested at this circuit over a month ago, and since then we have competed in two Grands Prix, and learned more about how to get the best out of the engine. That mean our work today focused on transposing this new knowledge onto the baseline we established during six days of testing at this circuit before the season began. The engines performed faultlessly, the straightline speeds were competitive, and the lap-times reasonable. Just like in Sepang, we fully expect to have a challenging weekend ahead, as there are no miracles in Formula 1, and improvements come with time and hard work. But we have made the best possible start, which we will look to build on tomorrow and on Sunday."

Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen (1st, 1:33.527): "It is too early to say where everyone stands, but the performance levels of the top teams seems to be very close. Today, it was difficult to find the right balance of the car, partly because at this track, the wind makes the car difficult to drive. Towards the end of the second session, we found some good settings and now we must keep on that track to find a bit more speed to keep ahead of the rest. But all in all we can be satisfied with the work we have done today."

Felipe Massa (4th, 1:33.772): "I am pretty happy with the handling of the car, which has allowed me to be very consistent in terms of performance over long runs. We have a good point from which to work over the rest of the weekend. In particular, we have to work on improving our performance on the first lap on new tyres. It all looks very close, but we have everything we need to do well in qualifying and in the race."

Luca Baldisserri, Head of Trackside Operations: "Today, we struggled a bit more than on the two previous Grand Prix Fridays, in terms of finding a good balance on our cars. We tried various settings and then, in the second part of the second session, we came up with a good compromise. Performance and consistency over a long run are reasonably satisfactory on both the Bridgestone tyre types that we have at this track. It is very close as can be seen from the times. So it does not need much to tip the balance one way or another and so all elements of the package have to be working at their best if we want to aspire to the best result."

Honda

Rubens Barrichello (11th, 1:34.391): "Obviously we saw a good improvement towards the end of the afternoon and right at the close of the session the car was better than it has been at any other time today. We worked a lot on the car during the two sessions and made some major changes but there is a long way to go yet because we are nowhere near where we need to be with the balance."

Jenson Button (22nd, 1:36.079): "The car is the same as it was in Malaysia so it would have been unrealistic for us to expect any improvement on where we were last week. However we aren't as slow as we appeared today because I only had the chance to run on old tyres in the second session before I had the engine failure. There is still work we can do on the balance to make the car a little bit better for tomorrow, but we have a lot to do and it's going to be another long hard race."

Jacky Eeckelaert, Engineering Director: "We worked through our usual Friday race preparation. The temperatures are much higher than they were when we tested here in February, so this has changed the balance of the car. Rubens was able to complete all the planned runs but is still not quite happy with the set-up. Jenson suffered an engine failure and was unable to check his race set-up on both types of tyres. We have a lot of work to do overnight to try to improve for tomorrow."

BMW

Robert Kubica (3rd, 1:33.732): "The second session was better, but we still have balance problems. We used the spare car for the second practice because this morning I faced the same problems as in Malaysia. This one is more consistent and so now we have to analyse why this happens. We changed the set-up a bit because the car's handling is still not perfect, but things are not looking bad. The track was very dirty, especially in the morning session. When we tested here before Australia we did thirty ones and now we are doing thirty threes, but of course there is some time coming as the rubber goes down as long as there is no rain. If it rains again it will be the same story, and if the wind comes there will be sand on the track and that can change the conditions quite a lot."

Nick Heidfeld (7th, 1:34.076): "For me everything was troublefree today, although to begin with the car's balance was not exactly how it was during the test here six weeks ago. We had to look into why we have oversteer, but we worked on that. I am quite happy. Also our long runs have been okay."

Willy Rampf, Technical Director: "I am satisfied, especially with the results of second free practice. We have completed the scheduled programme with both cars without any problems. We have done some preparation work for the race, so in tomorrow's free practice we can concentrate on qualifying. We put Robert into the t-car for the second session after he had tried several set-up changes. This car felt better, so now we have to analyse what the differences are between the two cars."

Toyota

Jarno Trulli (10th, 1:34.366): "The fact that we tested here before the season obviously means that all the teams have a lot of recent experience of this circuit. Still, this was a standard Friday for us testing tyres and set-up although the conditions have been difficult. The track is as dusty as usual and when the wind changes direction it can have a major effect on the car's balance. So we have to make adjustments to cope with that and we still need to work a bit on the set-up tonight. Of late this track hasn't been particularly kind to us but now we must push to make the top ten tomorrow and aim for the points again."

Ralf Schumacher (18th, 1:35.427): "Overall it was a reasonable day for us. We made it through a lot of work without any major problems so I am fairly happy with that. Grip was a struggle, though. The track was slippery in the beginning so that made it a bit difficult. It became better during the day as more rubber was put down and the dust was cleaned off. This wasn't a good race for us last year but we come into this year's grand prix with points from the last two races. Now we must look to build on that here over the weekend."

Dieter Gass, Chief Race Engineer: "First of all, a good job from David Coulthard for not running over our brakes guy in the pit lane! Apart from that it's been a very productive Friday for us and we collected a lot of data on both cars. We had a small mechanical issue on Ralf's car but we were able to fix that during the session so that we could run through to the end. While Jarno seems to be quite happy with the car, Ralf struggled a bit to come up to speed so we will have to look into how we can improve his situation tonight. Having tested here recently there were not many surprises and the tyre comparison was a confirmation of what we saw before the season. We definitely seem to be looking more competitive here than we were in the test so we will look for a strong performance on Saturday and Sunday."

Red Bull-Renault

David Coulthard (9th, 1:34.359): "Conditions were tricky out there today, due to all the dust and everything that's gone down onto the track since we had the test here. Of course, the test gives you the benefit of having run through quite a few set up changes, but there were a few people going off the track and running wide. For us, it's quite clear where we are with our tyre choice, so let's see what tomorrow brings, it's very tight in the mid-field."

Mark Webber (14th, 1:34.677): "The first session was difficult for us and we worked hard over the break to improve the car for the second session. We definitely made good progress, the guys worked well and in the second practice the car had better balance. We understand the tyres pretty well here, and overall I'd say we're in about the same shape as we were for the last two races, so we're going along okay."

Williams-Toyota

Alexander Wurz (6th, 1:33.973): "Today we had a little bit of work to do because we didn't test here over the winter. Nevertheless, I think that we are now just about there with the others. I did a tyre comparison at the end of session two and some set-up work over both and I now have quite a good idea where we'll go for Saturday's qualifying and Sunday's race. So far, then, we're on target."

Nico Rosberg (8th, 1:34.189): "It wasn't so easy this morning but the track quickly improved so we improved as well. We found some good set-up solutions today. We went in the right direction and we caught up relatively quickly considering we didn't test here. Track conditions seem to be quite different from how they were in the test so, from that point of view, that's good for us. Our long run pace was also ok. We now just need to work on our qualifying performance overnight and during tomorrow morning's practice session."

Sam Michael, Technical Director: "It was a good first day in Bahrain. We spent both free practice sessions going through all the usual systems checks, particularly concentrating on the brakes and their wear and stabilised temperatures in these conditions. Everything seems to be working fine and at the right level. We've also been tuning the car for long runs because I'm sure the heat here will take its toll, especially on the tyres. We will now go and spend the evening working towards tomorrow's qualifying session."

Toro Rosso-Ferrari

Vitantonio Liuzzi (17th, 1:35.268): "A good day overall, with no big problems on the car. We worked mainly on evaluating the different tyres to see which to choose for qualifying and the race. I am quite happy that the car seemed to respond very well to all the set-up modifications we made. Also, our pace was quite good today, which means we have made a little bit of progress since last weekend. But the big step won't come until later so the important thing this weekend is to get as many kilometers as possible under our belt."

Scott Speed (20th, 1:35.687): "The car definitely feels more competitive than it did when I drove it here in the pre-season test, but that's only to be expected. More importantly, the car feels more competitive than it did last week in Malaysia. That's great news, as we did not really expect that. Now we will have to see if that stays true for the rest of the weekend. We have made a lot of changes to the car set-up since last weekend. We are chipping away and learning more and more about the car, so this has been a useful day."

Spyker-Ferrari

Adrian Sutil (19th, 1:35.582): "It was a good first day in Bahrain. I like the track with its long straights and hard braking down into tight corners. I think our car suits it very well; it's important to have a quick car with good traction. I'm quite happy with my balance, it's much better than in Malaysia and the gap to the front is not that big."

Christijan Albers (21st, 1:35.835): "I felt happier in the second session with the balance of the car; it felt better when there is more rubber on the track. We're getting closer to finding a reasonable set-up, we've still got a lot of work to do, but I know we will be ready for tomorrow."

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: "I think we can be very pleased with the performance we've shown here today, especially as we hadn't been here in either of the pre-season tests. It was pretty productive - we spent the day evaluating the hard and medium Bridgestone Potenza tyres that we haven't run here before, running the softer tyre in the afternoon. Overall we're very happy with the progress today; the car is clearly working a lot better here than in Malaysia. We had a clear direction in set-up we carried over from last weekend, it's proved to be the right one and I hope the improvement can continue over the weekend."

Super Aguri-Honda

Anthony Davidson (13th, 1:34.595): "We had a bit of a frustrating morning with a gearbox issue after the first stint. But after that was rectified we had a very good second session and found a good balance, especially on the soft Bridgestone Potenza tyre and got a good first lap balance at the end of the day. I am confident about the grip levels on the longer runs as well. The hard tyre is a different story, but I think that the gap should close between the two types of tyre, like we saw in Malaysia, over the weekend."

Takuma Sato (16th, 1:35.001): "It was a good first day. We have maintained our momentum from last week in terms of long run pace, and also from the test here before the opening race when we tried a lot of SA07 aero configurations. I am happy with the consistency of the car, but we will work on increasing our speed for tomorrow."

Graham Taylor, Sporting Director: "During Free Practice One the circuit was very green with no rubber down whatsoever, so we waited a while before running. We completed some rudimentary checks to put us in the right direction for this afternoon, however we lost a fair amount of time with Anthony as we had a small gearbox problem. The issue was quickly resolved and we had a successful afternoon. Both cars were reliable and we have collected some very good information. Taku put in some useful runs and both drivers seemed very happy with the balance of their cars."