Japanese GP Friday Arrows notes

The free practice session for the penultimate round of the Formula One World Championship proved to be very productive for the OrangeArrows team despite a small earth tremor during the second session, as Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa worked through various car set-ups to adapt the car to the Suzuka circuit.

Both drivers completed a good number of laps with no real car troubles, with Jos Verstappen improving his lap time by almost one and a half seconds in the second session to finish 17th with a lap time of 1:40.523. Pedro de la Rosa also significantly decreased his lap time by 2.5 seconds when putting in a last flying lap of 1.39.547 to end the practice session in 8th position.

Pedro de la Rosa:
"It was a good session. The first session involved just changing set-ups on the car to improve it for the second session and actually we did improve the car quite a lot. If I couldn't improve anymore it was because of the earth tremor!!!! Seriously though, I couldn't feel it at all, but the car felt good, although we still have to find more front end grip as that costs us a lot of time but the car seems good through the 'S' corners and the medium and high speed corners".

Jos Verstappen:
"The car wasn't running too badly on old tyres but even with new tyres on I still didn't get the gains that I should have had. We have too much understeer and especially in the first sector I lost quite a lot of time so we have some work to do for tomorrow I think".

Tom Walkinshaw:
"Both cars and set-ups went to plan. I think we have established a reasonably good race set up but still have to work hard for qualifying".