A tough first day for the Sauber squad
Kamui Kobayashi and Nick Heidfeld both used the first two free practice sessions ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix for many comparisons. On the time sheet Kobayashi ended up in 12th, while Heidfeld was 15th.
Kobayashi is using a special helmet design for his home race. The helmet’s basic colour is white, which makes the red rising sun from the Japanese flag easy to recognize on both sides. On top of the helmet, as usual, Kamui’s name is written in Japanese script.
Kamui Kobayashi:
C29.04 / Ferrari 056
1st Practice: 14th / 1:34.271 min (19 laps) / 2nd Practice: 12th / 1:33.471 min (31 laps)
“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:
C29.03 / Ferrari 056
1st Practice: 9th / 1:33.791 (23 laps) / 2nd Practice: 15th / 1:33.697 min (33 laps)
“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.”
