Schumacher hits the barrier
Mercedes GP Petronas drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher finished today's practice sessions for the Monaco Grand Prix around the streets of Monte Carlo in third and seventh places respectively.
· The team's focus today was on set-up development and comparisons of the soft and super soft Pirelli tyre compounds
· Michael had a small accident going into turn one in the closing minutes of P1 which ended his session early
· Following excellent work from the team, he was able to complete 33 laps in P2
· Both drivers placed in the top ten in both sessions today; Nico completed 64 laps while Michael totalled 47 laps
Nico Rosberg: "It's great to be on the track again here in Monaco. I felt very comfortable from the beginning and we did quite a good job on the set-up. It can be difficult here to find the right settings as you have to put a lot of things together such as brake balance and tyre degradation, but we had a decent day and I'm happy with our start into the weekend. The tyres are not as bad as we expected and the degradation will be quite low, so pole position will be a bit more important than I expected before today."
Michael Schumacher: "Our gap to the front seems to be less here than in Barcelona. With my crash this morning, we had made a set-up change for the run and I locked up braking for turn one. After that, my decision to go down the escape road was too late, which is why I hit the barrier. The mechanics did a super job and the car this afternoon was just as quick as this morning. What Nico showed in terms of one-lap pace looks good, and our long runs were also quite reasonable.
Ross Brawn: "We had a productive day with lots of good work achieved. The team recovered extremely well from Michael's incident this morning, and gave him a good car for the afternoon session. We worked on high and low fuels levels with the two tyre compounds, and the tyres seemed to hold up reasonably well, probably better than we expected, which will be taken into account for Sunday's race. Overall, today was a good start to our Monaco weekend."
Norbert Haug: "We had a productive first day here in Monaco with Nico and Michael posting good lap times compared to our competitors. Certainly we have made a much better start to the weekend than one week ago in Barcelona. Michael had a little off in the first session and the team did a great job to repair the car by shortly after the start of the afternoon session, so that Michael was still able to complete 33 laps. Our plan is to make another step on Saturday and hopefully we can qualify both cars in a good position for the race on Sunday."
