Reasonably positive day for Ferrari at Hockenheim
Three hours of free practice without the slightest technical problem kicked off Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's weekend at the German Grand Prix, in a race which marks Hockenheim's return to the Formula 1 calendar.
The first session was characterised by changing weather conditions, with a wet track at the start, which got progressively drier. No rain and even a few bursts of sunshine in the second session. Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa completed a total of over five hundred kilometres, working on car set-up and comparing the two types of dry tyre at our disposal. "It was a reasonably positive day," commented Team Principal of the Gestione Sportiva, Stefano Domenicali. "We were able to work without interruption which is the main thing on a Friday. In general, both drivers are pretty pleased and I think our performance level matches that of our main rivals, which was also the case in last week's test. The weather looks like being a bit uncertain tomorrow, therefore we will have to be ready to tackle every eventuality and I think we can hold our own both in qualifying and in the race."
Felipe Massa: "All in all, it was a good day. We were always competitive, as were our main rivals. It won't be a stroll in the park, but we can take them on. We also worked on a wet track and I feel I can claim we will be on the pace in any conditions. There was not much difference, today at least, in pure performance terms between the hard and soft tyres but I think the latter will be a little bit quicker still and will definitely be the right choice for qualifying. Now we have to study our data to be in the best possible shape for both qualifying and the race."
Kimi Raikkonen: "Friday's results always need to be looked at with a degree of caution as you never know for certain what the other teams were doing and today is no exception to that rule. For our part, we tried to improve the set-up of the car compared to the point we had reached at the end of the test and we found, especially towards the end of the day, a few settings that could be interesting. So, I am reasonably pleased with how things went and I think that there is still room for improvement. The times of our main rivals? As I said at the start, there are too many question marks to be certain: what I can say is that we will be competitive, especially as right up until the final minutes, the times were all very similar."
Luca Baldisserri: "It's positive to start a race weekend doing so many kilometres without experiencing any technical problems. We worked from a good starting point having run at this track for three days last week. The pecking order seems similar to that at the test, with our car pretty competitive over a long run. Now we will analyse all the data we have to be as well prepared as possible for qualifying, which involves a degree of uncertainty over the weather, although it is not expected to rain for the race."
