There were top ten times in Abu Dhabi practice for Pastor Maldonado and Sergio Perez while Bruno Senna narrowly missed out...
Williams:
Pastor Maldonado: "Today was much better as everything came together and I am happy for that. Our long run pace looks quick again, qualifying pace less so but I think we are still looking good when compared to what everyone else was doing today. Qualifying will be important here as well as it's difficult to overtake. I like this track though and we are looking competitive."
Bruno Senna: "It was a tough day today. Tyre degradation was quite high and we had a few braking issues which made it difficult to read what the car was doing. However, we have a lot of data from today to work through ahead of tomorrow. Qualifying in the top ten is possible, as we've seen the pace in Pastor's car, so we'll be working hard tonight to make further improvements tomorrow."
Sauber:
Sergio Perez: "For me it was a good day. We have completed our entire planned programme, so in this respect it was very positive. I am comfortable with the balance of the car and, therefore, I think my position in the second session is pretty much what we are capable of here. This means Q3 is possible."
Kamui Kobayashi: "I definitely have to work and improve the balance of the car. At the moment it isn't right in any regard, but it is only day one in Abu Dhabi. The track's grip normally improves a lot here, which might also help. Today I didn't really manage to get the tyres to work. However, on long runs I don't see any issues with either the soft or medium compounds in terms of degradation."
Mercedes:
Nico Rosberg: "That was a good testing day, and we were able to evaluate a lot of different things. Unfortunately we are still lacking some pace but I hope that we can achieve some points with a good strategy tomorrow and on Sunday. Generally tyre degradation is not as big as last year, so it will be interesting to see how the race turns out."
Michael Schumacher: "Today we saw what I would call a 'normal' Friday - doing certain programmes, changing the set-up and typical data collection work. What we saw at the end of the day is probably where we are, so a pretty realistic picture. At the moment we are driving to finish in the points, and that is what we will target for the weekend. On a different note, it really is impressive and beautiful to drive here, and to drive from daytime into the night really is special."
Force India:
Nico Hulkenberg: "I think it's still difficult to know where our performance level is right now, but we probably need to raise our game and improve a bit overnight if we want to challenge for points. The balance is not perfect just yet so we need to work tonight to get the car closer to the sweet spot. Apart from that we got through the programme, collected all the tyre data and so it was a fairly normal Friday."
Paul di Resta: "I think we learned quite a lot this evening, but there's a lot of work ahead of us to understand where we stand and where we can improve. This track is all about about grip in the low and medium speed corners and that's where we need to focus tonight. In terms of tyres we collected a lot of data today so we will be working hard to make sure we get them in the right operating window for qualifying and the race."
Related Links
Vettel edges Hamilton in second practice
Friday's Pictures From Abu Dhabi
