Force India

Adrian Sutil recorded the fastest time of the day in the afternoon's second free practice session after setting an encouraging third quickest lap in the morning. His programme focussed on evaluating the VJM02 in low drag configuration, completing back to back tests of different wing levels and assessing the tyre options available this weekend.

Tonio Liuzzi, making his Force India race debut this weekend, completed 68 laps over the two sessions as he quickly got to grips with the VJM02 under racing conditions. His morning's best time, a 1:25.689, was the 16th quickest time of the morning while he finished the session with the 12th best lap following steady improvement over the day.

Adrian Sutil (car 20): Everything went well today. The car was working perfectly and we can be very happy about the result. It was a very, very good time that came as a result of some good work, a great set-up and getting the tyres to work well. We didn't try specifically to go fastest but if you are on top of your game and the car is working well there's no reason why you couldn't be P1 at the end of the session. It was a very productive day on a very cool track and it's good to have some fun right now.

Tonio Liuzzi (car 21): Today was much better than the straight line testing! It's a completely different approach as you get used to the rhythm, the braking points and I think it's a great challenge. We went for longer runs and covering a race distance and everything is going in the right direction. For now I am taking it a bit easy as I want to get used to the tyres and the car and tomorrow we will work on the lap time for qualifying. We knew we would have a competitive car and I felt the balance was good, and there is still at least half a second more as I had some traffic on some of my fastest laps. It's just the beginning of the weekend but I am really happy about how it went. I think the car is responding really well and we are optimistic for tomorrow.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: A very good first day back in a race seat for Tonio, and a productive programme from Adrian. We lost some time with Adrian's car at the start of FP2 following a planned engine change, but once back on track he made good progress. The car seems to be performing well at lower downforce in race trim, but as usual at this demanding circuit there is plenty of work to do to prepare for qualifying.

Williams

Conclusions – Patrick Head, Director of Engineering: “We’ve been doing our homework on the tyres today. Both tyres look pretty good and we’ve gathered a lot of data today to go through to optimise our set-up for qualifying tomorrow.”

Nico Rosberg: “The most important job today is to find the compromise between top speed and grip and it’s not easy to arrive at the optimum downforce level. We were very slow on the straights this morning, so we looked at this and we have found a good solution. Tyres are just as important and we have completed a good test, from my point of view the direction is pretty clear. The rest of our running time was focused on aerodynamics and we found some good direction, but despite doing some good homework, it is going to be difficult for us here and it won’t be an easy weekend. To repeat the Spa performance of making into the top ten in qualifying will require a helluva lap, but that’s not to say we can’t pull it out of the bag!”

Kazuki Nakajima: “Although we are not expecting much here, today didn’t go too badly. Certainly compared to Spa, I think I will be more competitive here, although it is perhaps too early to say how we will go in qualifying. We worked hard today and tried many different technical options, but importantly found some positive direction, so I think the main priority to is maintain this progress tomorrow.”

Toro Rosso

Sebastien Buemi: “We had a good day, running trouble free in both sessions. Now, we just need to find a bit more speed for tomorrow, when we will have a new engine, so let’s wait and see what we can do. It’s nice to drive at such a high speed track, because it gives you a different feeling, hitting speeds you never see anywhere else.”

Jaime Alguersuari: “I found it quite tough driving today for the first time, with this low downforce package, as I had no experience of that so far in F1. But that’s a good thing, as it is all part of my learning experience. I felt I got an understanding of how to drive the car on new and old tyres and with high and low fuel loads and I had a good feeling in the car. We have a reasonable set-up on the car, but I think we can improve it still further tomorrow.”

Ferrari

The results are difficult to interpret on this first day of free practice for the Italian Grand Prix, marked by Fisichella’s debut at the wheel of a Ferrari. “First of all, I want to welcome Giancarlo, who today was finally able to drive the F60, after eight days of theoretical work with the engineers,” said Stefano Domenicali. “Obviously, the team adopted a different approach to its work on the two cars: Kimi concentrated on race preparation, while Giancarlo worked on getting confident in the car. We completed a lot of kilometres which means we have plenty of data to analyse over the rest of the day. It’s hard to know where we are compared to the others: the gaps are very small and ten kilos of fuel more or less can translate into a significant step up the order.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with the way things went in these three hours of free practice and the initial impressions are good. There is still room to improve the handling of the car, which we hope to do in tomorrow morning’s free practice. The new kerbs don’t allow you to cut them with impunity, which is not a bad thing given the difficulty we have experienced in this area in the past. Our pace on a long run isn’t bad and we will do our best to fight for a place on the podium. As for the tyres, the softer compound is definitely quicker, but it’s also quite consistent in terms of performance.”

Giancarlo Fisichella: “I feel satisfied with this first day, which was particularly tough from a driving point of view. The major difficulties are in adapting to the different positions of the buttons and gaining confidence with the KERS. This morning, braking heavily at Ascari, I flat-spotted the left front tyre and that meant I had to fit the softer tyres earlier than planned: I felt more confident with those and I managed to drive at a strong pace. In both sessions, we didn’t go looking for performance and I had a lot of fuel on board. The potential is there to get onto the front few rows, but I need a bit more time to improve, especially in terms of braking and cutting the kerbs.”

Chris Dyer: “We can be satisfied with the result of the work we did with both drivers today. We completed our programme without any problems, concentrating on finding the best set-up on the car. We are pleased with the performance over a long run and, naturally, tomorrow morning, we will work on performance over the first lap, to prepare for qualifying. Giancarlo tackled the day’s work without experiencing any difficulty and we are not worried about his lap time, because the fundamental thing is for him to get experience in the car and with the use of KERS.”

BMW

The BMW Sauber F1 Team enjoyed a reasonable start to the weekend of the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. Both drivers made good progress during the two 90 minute practice sessions on Friday. The F1.09 has a modified front wing and a special rear wing to lower the drag for the high speed Monza circuit.

Robert Kubica: “We lost quite a lot of time in the morning session due to a problem with the brakes. Fortunately we were able to change the brakes in time and I completed a baseline run at the end of the session. In the afternoon we worked on the set-up of the car and tried to evaluate the tyres.”

Nick Heidfeld: “The lap times are not bad, especially when you take into account I did my fastest lap in the second session quite early on and even had some traffic. The car’s balance is better than it has been on some other Fridays, but there is still room for improvement. It is challenging to get the balance right for both qualifying and the race. We did the usual tyre evaluation and compared the softer and the harder compounds on long runs. The height of the new kerbs changes the circuit quite a lot, you have to get used to it and look where you can still go over them and which ones you better avoid. At the end of the second session I pitted a few minutes early after I went straight on at the Ascari chicane and wanted to have the car checked.”

Willy Rampf (Head of Engineering): “Monza is the only track where we run the low downforce package, therefore we invested quite some time in the morning to find a baseline for the set-up of the car. On the one hand it’s crucial here not to lose too much time riding the kerbs, while on the other hand braking stability is even more important here than on other tracks. In the afternoon we concentrated fully on race preparation and on the tyre comparisons. We are quite happy with the results on low fuel, however, with higher fuel loads we still have some work to do.”

Brawn GP

The first of the practice running for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix got underway today at the Monza circuit in northern Italy. Brawn GP’s Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button used the two ninety-minute sessions to evaluate their Brawn-Mercedes cars in the low downforce configuration required at the fastest circuit on the Formula One calendar. Rubens completed 59 laps over the course of the day with Jenson totalling 53 laps as the pair focused on set-up work and an evaluation of the two Bridgestone Potenza tyre compounds available this weekend.

RUBENS BARRICHELLO: “Our programme went pretty much as planned today with the performance of the car as we were expecting. Our set-up work was focused on long runs and I’m fairly happy with how the car feels and with the braking stability. We have some work to do on the balance but overall a good start to the weekend although today’s running doesn’t really give us an indication of how qualifying will play out tomorrow.”

JENSON BUTTON: “We did a lot of set-up work today with the car in the low downforce configuration although we had a couple of issues which meant that I couldn’t do the long runs that we had planned so that was a bit frustrating. Everything was sorted out by the end of the day which is good but we have a lot of work ahead of us. It feels very different running with such low downforce but the car has been performing reasonably well. We need to work on the fine-tuning of the set-up overnight to ensure that I’m completely happy with the balance before qualifying.”

ROSS BRAWN: “With Monza being such a unique low downforce circuit and the fact that we haven’t had the opportunity to here test this year, today’s practice sessions were particularly important to work on the set-up of the car. Our main focus has been on race preparation to ensure that we understand how the car feels with the low downforce. We’re reasonably happy with our progress over the course of the day and looking forward to the weekend ahead.

McLaren

LEWIS HAMILTON: Lewis conducted four runs this morning as he evaluated MP4-24’s low-downforce Monza package and back-to-backed a number of aero components. Despite losing a piece of bodywork (a right-hand-side fuel-filler cap) on his first lap, he was immediately on the pace, topping the timesheets for the whole session. He completed runs of three laps/1m24.632s best, four laps/1m24.147s, five laps/1m23.936s and three laps/1m24.920s.

The afternoon’s session also started with a slight hiccup when Lewis flat-spotted his tyres under braking for the Variante della Roggia and pitted early to avoid the excessive vibration. Nonetheless, he enjoyed another productive session, tweaking the set-up and evaluating both tyre compounds while running heavier fuel-loads. He conducted Prime-tyre runs of one lap/1m31.930s, 10 laps/1m25.099s before switching to Options and setting best times of 1m24.902s (nine laps) and 1m24.920s (three laps).

“I’m pleased with our progress,” said Lewis. “It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you arrive at a unique circuit such as this because you want to see if you’ve taken the right direction with the car’s aerodynamics. But this morning’s session showed us that the engineers had made a very accurate assessment of what would be needed. KERS certainly helps around here – we can expect it to be worth nearly four tenths in qualifying tomorrow – but we also made some good progress with our overall package. This afternoon was spent on heavier fuel-loads, so you can’t read too much into the times, but I’m encouraged by where we are.”

HEIKKI KOVALAINEN: A strong day for Heikki, who underlined the solid foundations of MP4-24’s low-downforce spec by finishing the day’s sessions in second and fourth place. He started the morning working to neutralise the set-up of the car, becoming increasingly happy with the balance as the session progressed – he set times of 1m25.133s/six laps, 1m24.332s/six laps and 1m24.492s/eight laps.

For P2, he once again declared himself happy with the balance, setting times of 1m25.311s/five laps and 1m25.164s/nine laps before switching to Options and recording a 12-lap long run (1m25.320s), a 1m24.482s/four laps and a final single-lap run of 1m24.865s.

Heikki said: “At Monza, you’re always facing the problem of balancing overall downforce with grip through the corners – and I think today was possibly better than we anticipated. We’re quicker in the corners than we were last year, which is good. “The KERS advantage here is nearly four tenths per lap so it’s really helpful along the straights and out of the slower corners. Others have more downforce compared with us, but we have this fantastic KERS from Mercedes-Benz. It’s funny: the teams have all adopted different technical solutions but the laptimes are still very close together – that’s the beauty of Formula 1.”

MARTIN WHITMARSH, Team principal: “A disciplined day’s work for the team today as we evaluated our low-downforce Monza aero components and looked at tyre performance on heavier fuel loads. We’re encouraged by the results of today’s programme, but are fully aware that all teams will be making substantial changes overnight and, equally, we’ll need to further adapt our cars ahead of qualifying. Nonetheless, we’re encouraged by the direction we’ve taken and the results we’ve seen in both of today’s sessions.”

NORBERT HAUG, Vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport: “Two good and productive sessions for us today. As we’ve all learned over the course of this season, the field is very tight. Heikki in fourth is separated from Giancarlo Fisichella in 20th position by just over a second, and all 20 cars are within 1.6 seconds. Our long runs on high fuel loads looked quite promising compared with our competitors, but I seriously think there are a handful of teams who can compete for pole tomorrow.”

Bridgestone

Bridgestone’s soft tyre proved to be the fastest rubber at the high speed and historic motor sports destination of Monza for the first day of the Italian Grand Prix. Under glorious blue skies Force India driver Adrian Sutil set a 1min 23.924secs time in the afternoon practice session.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was the fastest in the morning session, using the medium compound to set a time of 1min 23.936secs. In this session only Giancarlo Fisichella in his Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro debut made use of the soft compound tyre, with all other competitors only using the medium compound.

Q&A with Hirohide Hamashima - Bridgestone Director of Motorsport Tyre Development

What was significant about today’s running?
“Today was interesting as this was the first time that we have run in Monza this season. Historically, there would be a test here before the race weekend, so today was the first time that the teams have used their special low drag and lower downforce Monza configurations. Additionally, the revised kerbs have changed the nature of the lap, so this was another factor to consider today. Despite this, lap times were once more very close, with the top twelve cars this afternoon separated by a second.”

How do you expect this allocation to work over the weekend?
“It is still too early for us to make strong predictions. The track is still improving and there were many different chassis set-ups and aerodynamic configurations used today which makes tyre comparison difficult. What we can say is that both compounds have worked well today. We haven’t seen any graining and there were no other particular tyre issues. As the times are so close the smallest mistake by a driver or in car set-up will make a big difference in qualifying tomorrow.”