Silverstone wind affects Brawn's day
Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello began Brawn GP’s on-track preparations for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone today. With both cars affected by the strong breezes around the circuit, the afternoon session provided more valuable data as the drivers worked through a series of aerodynamic and set-up evaluations with the latest upgrades for the BGP 001 car.
A busy programme saw Rubens completing 55 laps over the course of the day with Jenson completing 48 laps.
Rubens Barrichello: “We had a reasonable day and made some good progress on the balance particularly in the second session. There is a lot of work ahead for us tonight however and the pace of our closest competitors was impressive which we need to have a look at. We will have to see what tomorrow will bring but hopefully the track will come towards us and we can have a good day.”
Jenson Button: “We tried a few different evaluations with the aero today and initially struggled as I had no grip in either the high or low speed corners. The wind also really affected the car’s performance today. We made improvements towards the end of the afternoon session so we have some good information to look at tonight to try and make further progress before qualifying.”
Ross Brawn: “The track evolution this morning and the strong winds have combined to make the cars quite difficult to work with today and it has been something of a challenge to achieve our planned programme. However this afternoon’s session was more productive with both Jenson and Rubens giving similar feedback on the characteristics of their cars. We will go through all the information carefully this evening but the data gathered this afternoon should give us the right direction on the set-up and aero configuration required for qualifying tomorrow.”
