Canadian GP: Virgin Friday report

The first session at Montreal always takes place on a dirty track, and today was no exception. The sun was out for the start of the session, but the temperature slowly came down, becoming quite chilly by the end. Both drivers reported issues with grip and for quite a while there was very little track action. The team focused on gaining valuable aero data, however Lucas' morning was cut short by a problem with the brakes on the front left of the car and he had to sit out most of the session.

This afternoon, in slightly warmer conditions, the team continued to run through the tyre programme, however it is clear that there is a lot of work to do overnight to examine the data and try to find the optimum set-up.

Timo Glock, Race Driver #24
"It has been a difficult day for us. Obviously we haven't raced here since 2008 and the track conditions didn't really help us today. We have played around with a lot of things on the aero side and I think we were a bit optimistic with our package for here. We expect the track to continue to improve, which will help us for tomorrow, but the competition looks quite strong so we have a lot of work to do this evening to get to where we need to be."

Lucas di Grassi, Race Driver #25
"It was a tough day for me today because it's my first time racing in Canada and we didn't get the best start to the weekend. I didn't run in the first Free Practice because we had an assembly issue with the brakes on the front left. In the second session I was trying to improve the car but we have a long way to go before we arrive at the best set-up."

Nick Wirth, Technical Director
"We had an unfortunate assembly error today that caused Lucas to stop on circuit and sit out P1, which was very frustrating for him and the team. The track was incredibly dirty to start with and that didn't suit the low-downforce package that we brought here, but the circuit got a bit better after some cars ran, and even without our race engines it was clear that our straight-line speeds were more competitive than they have been on other Fridays. Nevertheless, we did some key tests specifically for the race, so now we'll do our usual Friday night analysis and I'm sure we'll have a stronger Saturday."

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