Still room for improvement for McLaren

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton posted the fastest lap of the day in Friday’s Free Practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang Circuit. In the afternoon session, Lewis did 32 laps and set a time of 1m35.055. Team mate Heikki Kovalainen was seventh fastest in the second session with 1m36.512 (30 laps) for the 5.543km lap. In the morning session, Heikki was third fastest with 1m36.556 (21 laps) whilst Lewis ended up fifth fastest with 1m36.626 (17 laps).

Lewis Hamilton: "I am pretty happy with today’s results as the car showed consistent pace throughout the session and good overall speed. Unfortunately the morning session was not perfect as I had a slight problem on the car right at the end, but this didn’t really have any effect on our planned programme of tyre evaluation and race set up work."

Heikki Kovalainen: "That was a good, steady start to the weekend. The car feels pretty comfortable to drive round here, and we made good progress on the set up for the race. The track surface had only recently been relayed, and as a result it was constantly evolving throughout the two sessions. The conditions here are always very extreme with the heat and humidity, but this had no effect on the cars performance, and I am pretty happy so far with how everything has gone. "

Martin Whitmarsh: "With these back to back races at the start of the season, it is often difficult to keep up the momentum of our relentless development pace; subsequently both drivers were evaluating several new parts on top of the set up and tyre evaluation work that is customary during the Friday sessions. Despite the small gearshift problem on Lewis’s car this morning we are pretty comfortable with the performance of the MP4-23 here. Obviously there is always room to improve and the engineers will be working hard this evening to find those extra tenths, but overall we are reasonably happy."

Norbert Haug: "We did, as originally planned, a lot of laps today and Lewis, Heikki and their teams found a good set up and achieved quick and consistent lap times on both types of tyres. However this will probably be of little help for tomorrow’s qualifying and Sunday’s Grand Prix as the weather forecast is predicting rain, but we should be well equipped in those circumstances, too."