Zoom Routine Friday running for Felipe Massa

After the novelties of the Singapore night race, it was back to the usual timetable today in Japan and the 180 minutes of free practice were all run in dry and fine conditions, although a few drops of rain fell immediately after the afternoon session. Both Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen had a trouble-free day, completing a very high mileage, thus acquiring plenty of data, all the more useful given that so much time at the Fuji track last year was spent running in the wet.

The Ferrari duo actually completed a total of 134 laps, double the distance they will have to cover in Sunday afternoon's race and ended the day with the fourth and fifth fastest times respectively.

Felipe Massa
"I am pleased with this first day in Japan. The balance of the car is very good, both on the first timed lap and over a distance. The times are very close and maybe I could have been a bit further up the order in the afternoon session if I had not encountered traffic on my last run on the soft tyres. These seem to be very quick, which is no surprise, but also very consistent. I really want to do well this weekend and we will try and win and bring home the best result possible for the two Championships."

Kimi Raikkonen
"It seems very finely balanced with the lap times all very close. This means it will be very important to have a good qualifying otherwise you run the risk of being a long way back on the grid. I think our car is going well on this track and even if there is still some work to do to improve the handling, I am reasonably satisfied. The harder tyres are very consistent, while the softer ones seem to lose a bit of performance over a distance. They're not bad on the first lap and it's a shame that on my last run, I locked the wheel and was unable to do a good time. My weekend? I will try to do the best I can for myself and for the team."

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal
"I realise this might sound boring, but today was a usual Friday. Generally, it was quite good: we got through a lot of work without any problems whatsoever, which is important. It's difficult to say what the real pecking order is as the times are very close and we don't know how much fuel the drivers had on their various runs. We expected to be competitive at this track and I think we will be, as indeed will be our closest competitors. We have a very simple objective for this weekend which is to put the two red cars in front of everyone else. It will be difficult, it will require us to do everything perfectly and we will do our utmost to achieve that."