Kamui Kobayashi (12th): “I am very happy to be in Suzuka, and I enjoy driving here a lot. But nevertheless it was a tough day for me. I wasn’t happy with the balance of the car because I have too much understeer. We definitely have to improve the balance by doing the right set-up changes. I found both tyre compounds difficult because they dropped off so quickly. After just one lap I had problems. In the morning I also had some aero parts to evaluate.”
Nick Heidfeld (15th): “Driving on the Suzuka Circuit always gives me a lot of enjoyment! I found the car really not too bad on the harder Prime compound, but then it was a surprise when we fitted the softer Option tyres. The car behaved a lot differently and the lap time actually didn’t improve. This is something we have to sort out before qualifying. In the first session this morning I did runs comparing different front wings.”
James Key, Technical Director: “It was a standard Friday for us. We had some aero test items in the morning, and rather than doing a lot of set-up work we mainly concentrated on running different parts to make sure we optimise our package from Singapore. In the afternoon we made some set-up changes and ran both tyre compounds. We found we have a small inconsistency in the balance in sector two, which is by far the weakest sector for the car. We have to work on that tonight. We have a lot of data to look at and we’ll analyse this in preparation for tomorrow.”
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