Fuel leak for Kubica as Heidfeld hits the wall

The BMW Sauber F1 Team managed to complete the lion’s share of its work for practice for the Canadian Grand Prix despite some incidents. Robert Kubica was not able to do his morning work due to a fuel leak. In the afternoon session both he and Nick Heidfeld had brushes with the wall, but luckily neither were bad enough to damage the cars.

Nick Heidfeld: BMW Sauber F1.07-05/BMW P86/7 1st Practice: 7th, 1.16.634 min
2nd Practice: 5th, 1.17.827 min ”
In the morning especially the track had extremely little grip, which made the car very difficult to drive. We then did some set-up changes for the second session, but I’m still not a hundred per cent happy. I didn’t get either of the two tyre specs to work properly – neither on a single lap nor on a long run. Shortly before the end of the second session I hit the wall with the right hand side of the car at the exit of turn 4. It felt pretty hard. I am surprised the car wasn’t damaged. Also in the afternoon I went straight on in the chicane because of three guys going very slowly in order to create gaps for a clear lap. That’s not a very clever thing to do on a part of the track where one approaches at 300 kph.”

Robert Kubica: BMW Sauber F1.07-07/BMW P86/7 1st Practice: 22nd , No Time
2nd Practice: 12th, 1.18.399 min “This morning we missed some running because of a fuel leak. After that the car has been quite difficult to drive. At the beginning of this afternoon’s running I had brake problems, and I made a mistake because of this. I went wide on one corner, spun and fortunately didn’t hit the wall that hard so was able to continue. We have done some running, which is good, so we now have to wait to see which way to go with the set-up, because certainly what we have at the moment is not the best. ”

Willy Rampf, Technical Director “Nick completed his programme without any technical problems. In the morning session he concentrated on the set-up, in the afternoon on race preparation. Our focus was also on the brake performance. Robert lost precious time in the morning due to a leak in the fuel system, which could not be repaired during the first practice session. Therefore, in the second session he worked on a reduced programme. But all in all we can be satisfied with the first impressions we got today.”