Water leak for Glock
Virgin drivers Timo Glock and Jérôme D'Ambrosio were out on track for the first time today here in Japan and completed their first laps of the weekend. Both drivers were out on track early this morning to complete their installation laps.
Jérôme then got straight down to his programme but unfortunately Timo was confined to the garage because of a water leak. The problem was quickly fixed and he was able to go back out on track for the last ten minutes of the session. Jérôme completed 24 laps and Timo, 13.
In the afternoon Timo was able to make up for time lost in the morning and, as with Jérôme, he continued his preparation for Sunday’s race. With a track temperature of 37°C, Timo and Jérôme went out with the Soft tyres on for their last two runs of the day, adding a further 30 laps each to the team’s tally.
Timo Glock, Race Driver #24: “It wasn’t a trouble-free first session as I had a water leak and I wasn’t able to run much. This cost us a bit of time and we had to carry work over to the second session in the afternoon, so we had a very tight schedule this afternoon. I think we are heading in a reasonable direction even though we still have to improve the car. The team did a great job today and fixed the problems very quickly. Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.”
Jérôme D’Ambrosio, Race Driver #25: “I think the first session went quite smoothly. The second session was busy and I’m not happy yet with the balance of the car, so we’ve got a bit of work to do on that. But definitely there is room to improve for tomorrow so we will get down to work tonight and try to get the best out of what we have. I really enjoy racing here - Suzuka is an incredible track.”
John Booth, Team Principal: “Overall quite a pleasing Friday. Both cars have managed to complete their full programmes and, particularly with Timo, we have arrived at a good set-up for this track. The morning was as ever taken up with trying various aero components and we still have quite a lot of data from this work to analyse overnight. In the morning we had a small issue with a water leak on Timo’s car which meant that he had to finish part of his FP1 programme in FP2. However, he worked well with his crew and engineers to recover this time - even adding extra runs to fine-tune the set-up before his qualifying simulation. Jérôme has been less happy on the Medium tyre in FP2 and we will need to go back through his runs carefully tonight to try and understand the differences to Timo.”
