German GP: Virgin Friday report

Torrential rain falling before the start of the first Free Practice session for the German Grand Prix meant that little experience could be gained for the first race to be run using both the Hard and Super Soft Bridgestone tyres. Instead the team ...

Torrential rain falling before the start of the first Free Practice session for the German Grand Prix meant that little experience could be gained for the first race to be run using both the Hard and Super Soft Bridgestone tyres. Instead the team concentrated on the wet set-up and waiting for the optimum time to set a quick lap. Both the extreme wet and the intermediate tyres were used, with the faster times being set on the latter tyre in the second half of the session.

By the time the second session had started, the track had dried sufficiently for the cars to run on slicks, and a frantic session ensued while teams tried to extract two sessions worth of information from the 90 minute period. Both the team and the cars were on top form, with Timo putting in 30 laps and Lucas 31. Timo ended the session fastest of the new teams, being the only driver to break the 80 second barrier.

Timo Glock, Race Driver #24
"It has been a good start to the weekend. The first session obviously got off to a slow start because of the weather but as the track dried out I was very comfortable with the direction we were starting to head in with the set-up and pleased to end the session in 12th - our highest placed position of the season so far. This afternoon, we improved the car some more to end the day ahead of Lotus as the best of the new teams and within 0.2sec of Toro Rosso. History has shown that we are strong at improving the car from Friday to Saturday and so I think we have a lot more to look forward to yet this weekend. It feels like the latest updates have given us another positive step forward for sure, so I'm optimistic about a good performance in front of my home crowd."

Lucas di Grassi, Race Driver #25
"This has been a very productive Friday and we are looking very strong for this weekend thanks to the new updates we have here this weekend. I hope that the weather stays stable so we can continue to keep improving the car and bring home the best result possible on Sunday."

Nick Wirth, Technical Director
"A positive start to the weekend, despite tricky weather conditions. Both drivers and their engineers adapted their respective programmes well to the changing conditions, and we have made more progress on car performance with the new developments that we ran today. As this package came so late from our digital development process, we were only able to get some of the elements of our Hockenheim upgrade on the cars today. The rest of the package will be fitted this evening, plus we'll analyse the tests done today and look forward to some more progress tomorrow and Sunday."