08.07.2011
Day one of the British Grand Prix in its new Silverstone pit and paddock facilities was mixed, but on the whole successful for the Sauber F1 Team. Despite a crash in first free practice, which left his mechanics with quite a bit of work on his damaged Sauber C30-Ferrari, Kamui Kobayashi was back on track for the second to get to grips with the rapidly changing track conditions. Sergio Pérez had no such dramas, and all his comments were positive. After a day of heavy rain showers, the team has now got to prepare for what is forecast to be a dry Saturday.
Weather: wet track, showers, 14-17°C air, 14-18°C track
Sergio Pérez:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 02 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 4th / 1:47.422 min (22 laps) / 2nd Practice: 9th / 1:52,169 min (12 laps)
“Welcome to England! For me it was a good day, although we had no dry running at all. We did some work today with new parts, and will only see tomorrow how the car handles in dry conditions. Almost everything we experience will be new and different on Saturday. I’m very positive and looking forward to a good qualifying session tomorrow.”
Kamui Kobayashi:
Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 01 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 18th / 1:50.133 min (17 laps) / 2nd Practice: 3rd / 1:51,395 min (16 laps)
“First of all I want to say thank you to the mechanics who fixed my car in time for the second free practice. When I crashed I had lost control on the wet astro turf. Despite this crash, I think it is obviously quite difficult to make any judgments on the car, the balance and the set up in today’s conditions. However, our performance in the wet won’t count for anything as the track will be dry tomorrow. Therefore we are looking forward to more surprises, hopefully nicer ones than we had today.”
James Key, Technical Director:
“It is great to be back at Silverstone in British summer time! We have good new facilities with a lot of garage space and a big crowd here in the rain. There is probably not much we can read into today with the conditions, as it was quite tricky to draw many conclusions. Fundamentally we got some good experience of the intermediate and wet tyres, which could be quite important for the rest of the weekend. In the morning we had some aero test parts on Sergio’s car, while with Kamui we initially had some test parts, but changed them for standard parts due to the weather conditions. I think Sergio’s programme worked quite well using the intermediate tyres, and he had a balance he was quite happy with in the conditions in FP1. Kamui was slightly less happy, but unfortunately he just clipped the outside of turn 16 and just as the surface changed he lost the rear end, which led to an off. The good thing is he was okay. The car was damaged, but not particularly badly and the guys did a great job to put it all together again for FP2. The second session was very, very wet to begin with and gradually it got better. Again we tried the wet tyre to begin with, which took a while to warm up and then the intermediate tyre at the end of the session as the track improved. We shall look at the data tonight but I don’t think there is much we can read into it for tomorrow, but ultimately the car seems to be working okay in wet conditions.”
Credit: Sauber F1 Team (www.sauberf1team.com)
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