Jenson Button (5th in Practice 2).
Championship leader says he is happy with the car.
“We had a pretty full-on evening with a busy programme of set-up evaluations and tyre testing. This venue is a tough one with the heat and humidity to contend with and the nature of the circuit and the closeness of the barriers demand your total concentration.
The key is achieving consistently quick laps and that’s what we’ve been working on today. The car feels reasonable and with some more work later tonight, we should be ready for a good weekend.”
Rubens Barrichello (11th in Practice 2):
Happy with the balance of his car despite running eleventh in P2.
“The car is feeling pretty good here after the first practice sessions and we’re pleased with the work that we achieved.
It was really busy out there today with traffic affecting our programme a little, particularly in the second session, but that was the same for everyone really.
We’ve been focusing on our pace for Sunday and that’s the most important consideration as we need the car well balanced to be quick in the race. I’m feeling positive and we should be able to achieve the right set-up ready for the weekend. It’s so different to the rest of the year to be racing here at night and it’s been a lot of fun so far.”
Sebastian Vettel (1st in P2): “We can see from the times that the track is a little bit slower here than it was last year, which is a shame because some of the faster corners are now not so quick, but overall the character has remained the same. It’s a challenging track – quite stop and go you don’t experience as much G-force here as on other circuits, but there are a lot of bumps, which don’t make your life easy, but I like the circuit a lot. Overall, it was a good day for us and we look better here than we did in Monza.”
Mark Webber (crashed in P2): “I was pushing a little bit too hard in the second practice, it was a bit slippery off line and I went off in the last corner and into the pit wall, which ended my session. The car was going well up until then; I was quick and both Sebastian and I had pretty good practice sessions.
I would have liked to have done a bit more mileage, but in the end we still learned quite a bit and we’ll be back tomorrow. I think it should be a good race for us, it will be interesting as the tyres are not massively easy to handle here, so we’ll have to work on that tonight. But, overall, not too bad.”
Lewis Hamilton (9th quickest)
“I’m still lacking some speed in certain areas, so I need to work on that. The sessions were a little up and down for me today – I didn’t have any major problems, but I wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped to be. Today’s not the important day though, and when the track gets a bit cleaner tomorrow, we’ll have a better understanding of the tyres.
The track’s still very bumpy and all the traffic makes it quite difficult to get a clear lap, and the Turn 10 chicane is also worse than last year a bit more dangerous but nobody’s had any problems there so it should be okay. The main thing for us is to analyse the data, try and improve the car and find some more time for tomorrow.”
Adrian Sutil (12th quickest) I was quite pleased with the car but it is difficult to judge the rear grip as we are still having some problems with graining, particularly on the soft tyre compound. We still have a lot of work to do but it’s only Friday. I think we can do much better and get a bit closer to the front. I feel I could definitely have done a quicker laptime as the traffic was really bad and I always lost my first and second laps. I still believe we can get into the points and we would still like to be in the top 10 in qualifying; that’s obviously our goal for the weekend.
