Zoom A strong start to the weekend for Vettel

The opening three hours of free practice ahead of the British Grand Prix would prove to be a positive affair for Sebastian Vettel. The German, who celebrated his 21st birthday at the circuit yesterday, set the sixth fastest time in the morning session and then the seventh in the afternoon.

Toro Rosso team-mate Sebastien Bourdais also has little experience of the 5.141km circuit in recent times and complained of understeer on his STR3 on his way to the 17th best time in the afternoon.

Sebastian Vettel
“Last week’s test was the first time I drove this track and I like it, especially the first part with very fast corners and combinations of them. It’s good fun and today we had a very productive session, ending up with clear answers on all the things we had on our test list. Therefore we can be quite happy, but now we must analyse what the others did to get a better idea of how quick we are… or how slow! I think we are in a good shape, the balance feels good and I’m happy with that. ”

Sebastien Bourdais
“This morning I had a lot of understeer in the high speed corners and this afternoon we dialled a lot of it out, but that has made the car worse in other areas, so our lap time is no quicker. We will need to look at the data, which we had some issues with also.”

“The track got more slippery as the temperature went up so it was difficult to read what the car was doing, especially as it would change from run to run, maybe partly because the wind was gusting occasionally. We need to look at everything we did today and pick the best set-up. But it might be raining tomorrow, so that will be an additional factor to consider when planning for tomorrow.”

E.A. © CAPSIS International