Planet-F1

Fri: Honda, Ferrari, BMW

Friday 4th July 2008

A closely fought battle in the midfield at Silverstone saw Honda mixing it up with Ferrari and BMW in Friday's practice.

Honda
Jenson Button: We achieved some useful information from our test programme today, even though the wind has moving been around all afternoon and we lost the majority of our running time this morning. We have a good understanding of the tyres, both the prime and the option, but there is still a lot of work to do as we are not entirely happy with the balance. We may be seventh on the timesheets today but that doesn't necessarily reflect our level of competitiveness, and we have a lot to achieve overnight to set ourselves up for qualifying."

Rubens Barrichello: I love the Silverstone circuit, so I was disappointed not to have run the first session today due to the problem that we had with the rear suspension. The second session this afternoon was positive with some good feedback from a well-balanced car. We don't know where our performance puts us in relation to our competitors yet, however I am confident of a much better weekend than in Magny Cours."

Ferrari
Felipe Massa: It was a big crash, but that's part of the game and I have had much worse accidents in my career. I didn't see any flags and I had approached the corner in the usual way and then I totally lost control of the car under braking. I tried to slow down, but the impact was still pretty violent. The most important thing is that we were able to fix the car and in the end we didn't lose that much time as it wasn't planned for me to do many laps in the morning. I want to thank all the lads for the work they did: they were fantastic and they didn't stop for a moment right up to the very end of the second session. We came to Silverstone with a good starting point after the tests we did here last week and I think we are going in the right direction. I am pleased with the balance of the car and its performance on both types of tyre we have here from Bridgestone."

Kimi Raikkonen: This morning things were not so bad, while in the afternoon I had a bit of a struggle to find the best settings on the car, which was not working as well as it had done at last week's test. We have to look at the data to understand why. Obviously, the order in the second session is not representative of the relative strengths in the field. But I am still reasonably confident and if we manage to find a good set-up, then we can fight for the top places."

BMW
Robert Kubica: There is nothing special to report from today, as it was just a normal Friday with us testing almost everything we had planned. Now we shall see how the weather is tomorrow and what we have to do to improve the car. As always in Silverstone, the balance of the car is changing with the weather conditions, especially the wind. I have never driven here in the rain, yet, but for me whether it rains or is dry makes no difference."

Nick Heidfeld: I'm not happy yet. For last week's test the balance of the car was better. I think this is due to the stronger winds we now have, which cause the balance to change every lap. I had difficulties with the softer tyres, as for me they didn't even last for a single lap."