Marussia Virgin British GP - Silverstone Friday Practice Report

Quintessentially British

It was all about the weather at Silverstone today. Rain, sun, showers and wind; they were all there. We were hoping for glorious sunshine for the Marussia Virgin Racing Weekend, but so far it's been a bit damp!

Timo Glock, Virgin Racing

Photo by: xpb.cc

Timo and Jérôme took to the track this morning for FP1, intending to work towards a good set-up for Sunday's British Grand Prix. But as one of the key strategy factors this year is tyre degradation, it's important to get some laps in on both Primes and Options. Today, however, it was Intermediates and Extremes that were fitted to the cars, as the Silverstone ecosystem delivered regular showers with only short breaks in between.

Although both cars ran well, and gathered data that may be useful for wet races in the future, the engineers still have some work to do tomorrow. Assuming that it's dry of course.

Timo Glock

“We’ve experienced typical English weather today. It was quite wet in the first session, even though it dried towards the end, and I was generally happy with the car. During the second Free Practice we were waiting for better conditions and at the end I went out again on my first set of tyres from this morning. I was just driving around and waiting for the conditions to improve. My tyres were very worn and I ended up with a lot of aquaplaning, so I just focused on keeping the car on track.”

Jerome d'Ambrosio, Virgin Racing

Photo by: xpb.cc

Jérôme D’Ambrosio

“A good day considering the weather, which obviously disrupted our programme and limited what we could do with finding a set-up. But for me it was good experience to be driving a Formula One car in the wet - it’s definitely a good track for that. We’re looking forward to tomorrow as the weather should be a bit drier, so we’ll see how it goes.”

John Booth, Team Principal

“Although the rain has provided us with the opportunity to conduct some further wet weather set-up on the Pirelli tyres, it has rather disrupted our planned programme.

In FP1 we had intended to do some more aero evaluations on certain parts of the car and also gather some of the basic numbers we require due to the new pit lane layout. Both cars have stepped through some pre-planned wet set-up work, which we had in the bag should we encounter a wet session.

Apart from Canada, which is a fairly unique circuit, we hadn’t had the opportunity until now to perform these tests, so I’m sure these will provide useful information which may not necessarily be applied here, but which may be used later in the year. It looks like the weather is set to improve over the next two days so tomorrow morning will be a busy session. I’m sure the engineers and mechanics will relish that first opportunity for some dry running in order to set the car up for qualifying.”

By: Marussia Virgin