Brazilian Grand Prix – Practice, Friday – 19.10.07
Weather: Wet in the morning and dry in the afternoon, 19°C
Air, 25-26°C Track Sao Paulo (BRA).
It was a trouble free day for the BMW Sauber F1 Team at
the Interlagos track on the first day of free practice for
the Brazilian Grand Prix. In the morning, when the track was
wet, the drivers did just one installation lap each as the
weather forecast predicted dry weather for the rest of the
weekend. In the afternoon they were proved right and at the
end of the day Robert Kubica was sixth quickest and Nick Heidfeld
tenth.
Robert Kubica: BMW Sauber F1.07-03/BMW P86/7
(T-car F1.07.04) 1st Practice: No timed lap/2nd Practice:
6th, 1.13.587 min “This morning we didn’t run
because of the weather. Our predictions said there would be
no rain and for this afternoon we were hoping that the track
would dry out. This is what it did and at the end it was nearly
completely dry. We did quite a lot of tyre evaluation as they
are pretty soft and there is a lot of graining, and it is
very difficult to do something against graining. They have
done a very good job on re-surfacing the track. There are
no bumps at all, and the track is very smooth. Normally when
you put new tarmac down the bumps stay, but that is not the
case here. It has made it easier to drive on, as the bumps
were upsetting the balance of the car, but as before it is
a nice track to drive on.”
Nick Heidfeld: BMW Sauber F1.07-08/BMW P86/7
1st Practice: No timed lap/2nd Practice: 10th, 1.13.785 min
“In the afternoon I did many laps, 44 in total, and
the car felt pretty good. We did a lot of comparisons and
now have a good amount of information about the tyres. The
softer compound tends to grain. The new tarmac is a clear
improvement.”
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): “Because
we don’t expect rain on Saturday or Sunday, we didn’t
do any running this morning as it didn’t make any sense
to send the cars out. In the second session we did the tyre
evaluation with both cars. Now we will look into the data
to make our tyre choice for qualifying and the race. Because
of the changing track conditions the lap times were improving
all the time, and this makes the data comparison very interesting.
We had no technical problems.”
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