German GP BAR Friday notes

Olivier Panis
“The team worked very hard today. We tried different set-ups and tyres and I’m quite happy with the balance of the car at this stage. Obviously we have to wait until tomorrow morning to understand more because everybody tends to play around with the fuel on a Friday and you never quite know where you stand. I have achieved some good results here in the past and, of course, I would like to do the same on Sunday. I feel comfortable with the balance which is good but we need to make the car quicker in preparation for the race.“

Jacques Villeneuve
“We started the day with the wrong set-up but we changed it and improved a lot. We ran two tyres back to back and concentrated on maximising grip and finding the right balance. We tested last week in Monza, knowing we may not be that competitive here in relation to other tracks this season. I do enjoy driving here – when you find the right set-up it’s a great track but when you haven’t found that set-up, it’s just slippery and bumpy and you end up going nowhere. It just becomes frustrating. That’s kind of how things were this morning but we have made some progress this afternoon and can continue to do so.”

David Lloyd, Race Engineer to Olivier Panis
“Olivier felt relatively comfortable with the car straight away this morning so it was really just a case of playing with the set-up and doing back-to-back runs on both tyre options. The session was fairly trouble-free so we’re looking forward to tomorrow to see how we are doing in terms of the overall picture.”

Jock Clear, Race Engineer to Jacques Villeneuve
“We did a lot of work today to find the compromise on set-up that is needed here and Jacques reported that he was happy with the balance at the close of the session. We did a lot of work in testing at Monza last week in preparation for this race and, though it’s difficult to make any predictions at this stage, we feel comfortable that we will have reliability – particularly where brakes are concerned. We’re certainly not expecting a repeat of the problems we encountered in Canada.”

-BAR