Brawn GP makes useful progress
Brawn GP began the team's on-track preparations for Round nine of the 2009 championship, the German Grand Prix, at the Nürburgring circuit located in Germany's Eifel Mountains today. With air temperatures dropping as low as just 10 degrees and a strengthening wind in the afternoon, it was an unseasonably chilly first day of practice.
Light rain just after the start of the morning practice session kept most of the cars in their garages for the first forty minutes. Once out on track, Jenson and Rubens began their initial set-up evaluations, using only the harder of the two tyre compounds provided by Bridgestone for the German Grand Prix weekend, completing 18 laps and 17 laps respectively.
The afternoon session proved equally overcast with a short rain shower ensuring a quiet opening half hour before the team's programme got fully underway. Both drivers focused on an evaluation of the super soft option and the medium prime tyre, in addition to developing the set-up of the car and combating the lack of front end grip suffered in the first session. Jenson completed 32 laps, finishing the day in third position on the timesheets, with Rubens completing 26 laps and in seventh place.
Jenson Button: "We had a reasonable day and were able to make good progress on the set-up of the car. We are still lacking in a few areas that we need to look at overnight and make improvements but overall today was a pretty good start to the weekend. The main problem is the cold conditions. The air temperature is almost what you would expect in winter testing and the low track temperatures are causing problems with the harder prime tyre so we will struggle with that tyre if it stays like this."
Rubens Barrichello: "It looks like this will be another cold race weekend but the car and tyres have a different feeling here from the last race at Silverstone. The harder tyre is really quite tricky and it was difficult to maintain its working range today. However the softer option tyre performed a lot better which is encouraging. We've made some improvements this afternoon but still have some way to go on the set-up, particularly with the front end of the car where we were lacking grip all day."
Ross Brawn: "We made some useful progress today using our experience at previous events where the cold and damp conditions have proved more difficult for us. We do still have several areas of the car's performance to develop overnight to ensure that we have the best package for the rest of the weekend. The weather forecast suggests that conditions may be a little more favourable tomorrow, which combined with some work on the set-up overnight, should put us in a good position for qualifying."
