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Team and Driver Quotes following Friday
Practice Sessions
(selected
team quotes, for a full team and driver preview click on the team name) McLaren Mercedes (
Alex Wurz - 1st, Juan Pablo Montoya - 4th, Kimi Raikkonen - 5th ) RON
DENNIS
"A reliable and uneventful first day with us, as always, concentrating on our Michelin tyre choice and race set
up. The team has come here highly motivated and has every intention of keeping the momentum of the past few races." Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Toyota (
Ricardo Zonta - 2nd, Ralf Schumacher - 10th, Jarno Trulli - 11th ) Mike Gascoyne - Technical
Director Chassis
"It was a productive first day. We had no mechanical worries on the cars and both race drivers completed
their programmes. Ricardo also completed his full programme doing tyre evaluation in the morning and long runs in the afternoon, and
we gained some good data for the tyre choice. There were a lot of yellow flags which made it difficult to get a clear run on new
tyres. But overall the cars look competitive so we'll be looking for podium finishes on Sunday." Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Williams
BMW ( Nick Heidfeld - 3rd, Mark Webber - 6th ) Sam Michael
(Technical Director, WilliamsF1):
Not as planned for the first day. On Nick's car we suffered a drive line failure, which we are
investigating now, and Mark ended up in a gravel bed. We will check his car and data later on when the car is back in the garage. It
is now going to be difficult for us to make our tyre choice, but, we have some data from the runs Nick did. Tonight we will work
through this tyre data and the set up. Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Ferrari ( Rubens Barrichello -
7th, Michael Schumacher - 13th ) Jean Todt: “Today was a day like any other, with the team working on car set-up and on choosing
between the two types of Bridgestone tyre on offer. A problem with the electronics prevented Michael from completing his entire
programme, but Rubens got through all of his. All in all, the situation seems quite good, with the car-engine-Bridgestone tyre
package appearing to be competitive. Now we must carefully analyse the data we have acquired to finalise tyre and set-up choice,
which will be crucial for tomorrow’s qualifying -which is now the only grid-deciding session – and for the race on Sunday.” Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Renault ( Fernando Alonso -
8th, Giancarlo Fisichella 9th ) Pat Symonds, Executive Director of
Engineering
"After the exception of Monaco, where we ran more laps than usual, this Friday practice represented a return to
the norm for us, so we ran very few laps in first practice in order to preserve the condition of our tyres for the second session.
Both drivers completed their programmes without any problems and, as is usual on Friday evening, the balance still requires some
fine-tuning to be completely to their liking. Performance-wise, the weekend looks like it will be closely fought with a number of
teams showing competitive pace today. As usual, we are slightly behind the Friday front-runners, but I am confident we will be
fighting for the front rows of the grid come tomorrow afternoon." Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Red Bull (
Christian Klien - 12th, David Coulthard - 14th, Vitantonio Liuzzi - 21st ) Günther Steiner, Technical Director:
“The
air and track temperatures have been higher than expected, so we’ll have to evaluate all the data to see which tyre to use
tomorrow. David had no major problems although we still need to work on the balance of his car. Christian did well, completing all
the laps we needed to evaluate the tyres, but Tonio’s car had a hydraulic problem near the end of the session. The hydraulic oil
pressure dropped, so we stopped his car to identify the problem and prevent any damage.” Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top BAR Honda ( Takuma Sato
- 15th,
Jenson Button - 16th ) GIL DE FERRAN, SPORTING DIRECTOR
"With no low fuel qualifying we focused on race
set-up and tyre choice today. We were also trying to be conservative with our engines as they have not been run for five weeks.
However the balance of both cars needs to be improved, so we have some work to do tomorrow." Full
Team and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Jordan
( Franck Montagny - 17th, Tiago Monteiro - 20th, Narain Karthikeyan - 24th ) TREVOR CARLIN, SPORTING DIRECTOR
“We had a very productive day today. Franck Montagny gave us
another opinion on where we are with the chassis and the tyres and he did a very good job. Moreover, we have made some good progress
on the Bridgestone tyres. Narain Karthikeyan had a few moments: he damaged the car when he hit a cone, then he had a little spin.
His laps were therefore very limited. Tiago did a very professional job and we are very pleased so far.” Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Sauber ( Felipe Massa -
18th, Jacques Villeneuve - 19th ) Willy Rampf (Technical Director):
"We concentrated on race set-up work all day. We
have virtually made our tyre selection. It was not a foregone conclusion, and we will confirm it going through the data this
afternoon. We will also be looking for ways to improve for tomorrow." Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Minardi
( Christijan Albers - 22nd, Patrick Friesacher - 23rd ) PAUL STODDART, Team Principal, Minardi Cosworth “Despite Patrick losing most of the second
session due to a damaged wiring loom and a clutch problem, overall, we’re relatively pleased by today’s performance at a track
that we felt would not necessarily suit our car at an early stage in its development. That said, to end the day between the Jordans,
and within a respectable distance of Sauber and Red Bull Racing, is highly encouraging indeed. Hopefully, tomorrow we can work on
reliability and set-up for what we hope will be an exciting race on Sunday.”
Full Team
and Driver Practice Report Back to Top Bridgestone Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager, said: “The track was quite dirty this morning
which produced some graining on the front tyres but the track improved considerably in the afternoon session resulting in the level
of graining reducing. The track temperatures did rise quite a bit to approximately 40 degrees [Celcius] which can be tough on the
tyres but the tyres looked OK today. Having completed the practice sessions we will now conduct the normal checks - wear checks for
example - on all the tyres used by our three teams and will make our recommendations to the teams later this evening.” Full
Bridgestone Practice Report Back to Top Michelin Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin motorsport director
“Several
of our partner teams appear to be extremely competitive at the Nürburgring – a pleasingly familiar pattern at every race so far
this season. There is a greater degree of uncertainty about Friday fuel loads this weekend, of course, with the revised qualifying
system. I completely understand why Formula One is reverting to a single qualifying session, but it is slightly frustrating for
engineers not to see the full potential of their cars and tyres being exploited on low-fuel runs during the build-up to the race. We
will have to wait until Sunday to appreciate where we stand in the overall scheme of things.”
“What we do know, from a
performance perspective, is that everything has worked very well so far for Michelin. We have several ‘prime’ compounds here,
although they are only subtly different, and one ‘option’. There is a clear distinction between the different types of tyres in
terms of single-lap performance, but we have yet to finalise the full implications over longer runs. It is conceivable that both
will be used in the race.”
“It has been extremely hot today – but one should never be surprised by huge temperature
fluctuations in this region of Germany. It was one of many factors in our pre-race preparations.” Full
Michelin Practice Report Back to Top
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