Robert Kubica:
“The conditions today were totally different to winter testing with high track and ambient temperatures. That was something new for everybody and it had a big effect on the tyres, which is why we did a couple of runs to observe the tyre degradation, followed by some set-up work. During the first session the new part of the track was quite dusty and slippery, but it improved during the day. I expect the track to improve a lot more over the weekend, too. Overall, it was a pretty good day.”
Vitaly Petrov:
“It was a great feeling to be out in the car for the first time this morning, but we had a busy programme so I got straight down to work. We had a few small problems to begin with, but we will work hard overnight to try and improve the car. My first F1 qualifying session will be very interesting tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it.”
Nico Hulkenberg:
“It’s still very difficult to form a picture of where everyone is at competitively, but I am satisfied that we had a relatively good day today and managed to compete everything we set out to do. The ambition remains the same, to make sure we get through to Q3 and to finish the weekend with some points.”
Rubens Barrichello:
“Because we had some minor issues in the garage today, we didn’t get as much track time as we wanted. We didn’t manage to finish our programme, but I am confident tomorrow will be a better day and we will catch up on the lost time. There has been an enormous amount of work and effort from everyone at Williams to get this far, which deserves my thanks.”
Adrian Sutil:
“It’s time to race now after so long out of the car! This morning we were checking all the systems and set-up we learnt over testing but nobody really knew where we were going to be. It’s our goal to get two cars through to Q3 for this weekend and I think we now have a very good baseline with the car and good downforce compared to last year. We can be a top ten runner with this car this year and myself and Tonio are working well together. If we can qualify in the top ten now it can lead to decent points, which is, at the end of the day, what we want to do consistently this season. I would say it’s a promising start to get there, for sure.”
Tonio Liuzzi:
“Overall it was a positive day and we got through all the programme. We learnt quite a lot about the car with these kind of hot conditions, which we weren’t able to do in the cool of the winter testing. The car is reacting well to different fuel loads and to different tyres and overall we can be pretty happy with the results at the end of this first Friday. I think we are in a good way for tomorrow. For sure we could improve our single lap time, but the race pace looks good. A positive start to the weekend.”
