Malaysian GP: BAR Friday notes

Driver, Chassis

Jacques Villeneuve BAR004/03
Olivier Panis BAR004/04
T-Car BAR004/02

Jacques Villeneuve Position: 17th
Best time: 1:41.461 (25 laps)

"We weren't very competitive today. I had a hydraulic problem in the second session and lost 45 minutes, but if we hadn't had that problem, I'm sure we could have improved the car quite a lot. In the morning, you figure out the track and clean it up a bit, then you really work on set-up in the afternoon. We weren't able to do that in the 10 minutes that we had so we didn't learn much today. We just managed to put different tyres on and get out to do a few more laps. We're a little slow but the car isn't bad to drive. We just need to work on the set-up and find a way to be quicker."

Olivier Panis Position: 18th
Best time: 1:41.473 (27 laps)

"This wasn't a very good first day for me. We could have done much better than 18th but we had an electronic problem and we couldn't really focus on the set-up of the car. We're on top of that problem now but we need to make up for the track time we lost to give us a good chance in qualifying. We have to roll up our sleeves now and go for it."

David Richards, Team Principal

"After a disappointing performance in Australia, our objective for this weekend is to get closer to the true potential of the car. Clearly, our position at the end of today's running means we have a great deal of work to do this afternoon and tomorrow morning. We have to overcome the reliability issues we encountered today to ensure we achieve the top 10 qualifying position we know we are capable of."

Malcolm Oastler, Engineering Director

"17th and 18th is obviously not where we'd like to be at the end of practice today. We lost valuable set-up time, mainly because of a hydraulic problem on Jacques' car, which kept him in the garage for most of the second session. Fortunately, we resolved the problem in time to get him out for a couple more runs to explore the tyre options. We also had a few problems with the gearbox downshift on Olivier's car, which upset the overall balance a bit. We need to work on the set-up now to improve the speed of the cars."

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