Australian GP Saturday Sauber notes

Pedro Diniz and Mika Salo qualified 6th and 11th respectively in the first free practice session for the Qantas Grand Prix of Australia.

Pedro Diniz: The car felt good today, and as practice went on we made good progress. I still had a bit too much understeer for my liking, but the traction is good and we will be working hard overnight to analyse ways to make the balance better.

Mika Salo: We made a lot of progress this afternoon, and part of the improvement came from me. I haven't been in the car for a month, and it took a while to get right back in the flow. I ran with a reasonable fuel load, and my car felt well balanced. We were able to stick to our plan, and work on race set-up, yet still record good lap times. Overall, our performance so far has been close to expectations.

Peter Sauber: As usual, we have to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from Friday times, which can often be misleading. But we were able to complete our establishment of mechanical and aerodynamic baselines, and were thankful that our hot weather simulations conducted in Spain had been so successful when the weather here proved even warmer than expected. With 34 and 35 laps respectively for both cars, we are also pleased with reliability today. Weather: Sunny and warm.