Red Bull Racing
Sebastian Vettel: “It’s clear that the cars have less grip than last year, but we try to come back from that slowly. It’s difficult to judge where we are compared with the others right now. It’s all based on feeling and the feeling I have inside the car at the moment is fine. I think we had a good day today, with no trouble. We had a long lunch break when we made some changes, but not because anything broke down. All in all, it was a good day.”
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton: No Quote
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro
Fernando Alonso: “There’s still a lot of work to do, but isn’t that what we are here for? I don’t think we will see anything different over the coming days, because before we can see what this car is really capable of, we must piece together all the pieces in the jigsaw. I know there is much expectation from the outside, but we are totally focussed on ourselves, without giving a thought to what is going on around us. We will only start to properly understand the situation in Melbourne.”
Mercedes AMG
Michael Schumacher: “My initial feelings with our new car are certainly good. I’m happy with the different evaluations that we have done over the last week, but obviously with the rule changes, we won’t know more until later. It’s certainly an improvement and we have worked hard on the areas we had defined last year. The aerodynamics figures look good so I’m not worried about the shape of the nose! Even though we had the hydraulic problem today, I’m pleased with all the mileage we have achieved so far with the new car.”
Lotus F1 Team
Romain Grosjean: “We completed a few aero runs and then started timed runs, but I was very quickly aware that the car wasn’t responding as it should. It’s not ideal to lose track time, but fortunately we will have the chassis which ran perfectly in Jerez so I should get some good track time tomorrow. It’s far better that we have an issue like this now rather than in Melbourne.”
Williams F1
Bruno Senna: “It has been a very interesting day working with different set-ups to assess the reliability of the FW34. We need to keep working hard to understand the car even better. The team will continue working over the next few days with Valtteri and Pastor, as we look to improve both pace and consistency.”
Sahara Force India
Nico Hulkenberg: “Once gain it’s good to do so many laps and I’m pleased with how things went today. It was only my second day in the car and I’m still bedding in and getting used to things, but after each run I felt a bit more comfortable. We started with some aero runs and more data gathering this morning, and then moved to longer runs in the afternoon. The car feels consistent and the drivability is good so I feel positive heading into tomorrow.”
Sauber F1 Team
Sergio Pérez: “It wasn’t an easy day for us. Nevertheless during the 66 laps we collected some very useful data, which we will analyse tonight, so in this regard it was still a satisfying day. I am very much looking forward to tomorrow and I hope we can get a lot more work done then.”
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo: “It was a good day with 76 laps under my belt. In the morning, apart from working on the overall development of the car, we were also getting ready for Melbourne, running through various procedures, working to a set time scale, as if it was a race weekend. That went well and in the afternoon, we did some race-type runs which were successful until the car stopped with just the final hour to go.”
Caterham F1 Team
Heikki Kovalainen: “That obviously wasn’t how we wanted day one here to go, but that’s what testing is for – pushing everything to the limit to make sure we get rid of the problems before we get to the first race. It’s hard to learn a lot from limited laps, but I’m back in the car on Friday and I’m sure we’ll be able to push on with the program between now and then and make sure we get as much as we can out of the next three days on track.”
Marussia F1 Team
Charles Pic: “It has been a very good first day for me and a positive way to begin the new season. The car has worked very well all day so we were able to push through with the programme. We made a lot of pit stops this morning and practiced all the procedures, which was very helpful for me, and this afternoon we completed a race simulation. I learned a lot from the day and I’m looking forward to running again tomorrow.”
