Belgian GP: Virgin Friday report

Mixed weather conditions are not entirely unexpected at Spa and the first day of practice for the 2010 Belgian Grand Prix was true to form. It started wet, got a bit drier, and then got really wet. This continued in the same vein until towards the end of free practice two when it finally became practical to use slicks.

Both Virgin Racing cars ran faultlessly throughout the day and in the first session the team concentrated on finding a good wet setup, only running on Bridgestone's Extreme Wet tyres. The second session ended early for Timo when he touched a white line and went off, but Lucas was able to work through to the end of session and accumulated a good set of data for the engineers to work with overnight.

Timo Glock, Race Driver #24
"A good morning. I would say the first free practice was pretty good, we had no problems and the car felt quite okay in wet conditions. Then I unfortunately made a mistake in Free Practice 2 -- I touched the white line, lost the car and hit the tyre barrier quite badly and the session was over quite quickly for me. But in general it didn't look too bad and I hope it will stay wet for the whole weekend as the car felt good in the wet. I was happy with it so let's see how it goes tomorrow"

Lucas di Grassi, Race Driver #25
"A very productive day. We were able to run the car on all the types of tyre available -- extreme wet, intermediate, prime and option. The forecast is the main doubt for the weekend but I'm happy with the progress we've made. I think we have covered pretty much every situation and after a problem-free Friday I'm looking forward to a good weekend for us."

Nick Wirth, Technical Director
"An interesting day in some interesting conditions! The morning was quite productive with both drivers trying some different setup solutions for the wet conditions. Timo's afternoon started in a promising way but his crash early in the session will require a change of monocoque tonight as there is some damage that can't be repaired at the circuit. Lucas had a more productive afternoon, and chose to run his option tyres earlier in mixed conditions and the primes at the end, in contrast to most of the others. The drivers are feeling quite confident so we should be ready for round two with the Spa weather tomorrow!"

-source: virgin