Solid basis for qualifying session for Mercedes
The first of the practice sessions for the Chinese Grand Prix took place today at the Shanghai International Circuit. During the afternoon session, Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher was the fastest man on track and thus the team is positive towards tomorrow's qualifying session.
Michael Schumacher: "It was a trouble-free day, and I am quite happy with how our car is handling so far here. The balance of the car was reasonably good, and obviously a balanced car contributes a lot to lap time. As a team, we are a lot stronger in certain areas this season, and we have a much better base to work from, although we are not quite where we want to be with this car yet but I am confident we will get there. We will now have to look deeper into the data in order to find out where we really are here, but I am looking forward to tomorrow's qualifying."
Nico Rosberg: "It's important for us at the moment that we try a lot of different evaluations during practice to improve our race pace. So I think it was a decent start to the race weekend today as we learned quite a few interesting things. The conditions were so changeable today that it was difficult to take the right decisions in terms of set-up work, and we struggled a little with the front tyres. That may have been caused by the cold temperatures today, and can change very quickly between now and the race, so I am not too concerned."
Ross Brawn: "We had a useful second session on the dry track this afternoon and were able to carry over some of the work that we wanted to do this morning to ensure that we completed our planned programme. Whilst our low fuel runs look good, our primary focus has been on race pace and working to understand the tyres so that we can use them as well as possible on Sunday."
Norbert Haug: "We are not reading too much into today's lap times but we are quite positive about what we have learned in terms of race simulations and the comparison between the tyre types on both our cars. In the limited time available after the wet first session, our team and drivers did a good job finding a solid basis to work from tomorrow."
