Hungarian GP Sauber Friday notes

Nick Heidfeld and Kimi Räikkönen finished in eighth and 15th places respectively after today´s first free practice sessions for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Peter Sauber (Team Principal)
“Generally it was a good Friday for us. Kimi Räikkönen was unfortunate to have a mechanical problem, though he still completed 30 laps, but Nick Heidfeld was able to demonstrate the progress we have made mechanically and aerodynamically since Monaco and we are in good shape for the race.”

Nick Heidfeld
“I´m quite happy and satisfied with the way things went today, especially as some of the cars ahead of me may have been on low fuel loads. I had a couple of spins due to entry oversteer, but we honed the set-up and the car felt good. If Monaco is the benchmark for this type of slow-speed circuit we can say that we have made a lot of good progress with the aerodynamics since that race, and other aspects of our technical package have also helped us to improve significantly.”

Kimi Räikkönen
“It looks worse for me today than it actually was. The track was dirty this morning so we decided to experiment and try a few things, with the intention of doing more intensive set-up work when the track had cleaned up this afternoon. Unfortunately I had a problem with the rear suspension which lost me three-quarters of an hour just after practice restarted. Today the balance of my car varied between understeer in the high-speed corners and oversteer in the medium, but we have good data to help us for tomorrow.”

-Sauber