Bahrain Grand Prix – Sakhir, 10th March 2006
Free practice - First session
Michael Schumacher: 4th 1.33.469 5 laps chassis 253
Felipe Massa: 8th 1.34.925 6 laps chassis 252
Temperatures: air 29 °C, track 27/36 °C
Free practice – Second session
Michael Schumacher: 2nd 1.31.751 15 laps chassis 253
Felipe Massa: 4th 1.32.175 13 laps chassis 252
Temperatures: air 22 °C, track 25 °C
Jean Todt: “It’s always quite
an emotional moment when the cars go out on the first day
of practice of a new season. New engines (2.4 litre V8), new
teams, new drivers and many unanswered questions: one can’t
get an answer after just two hours of free practice but on
Sunday evening we’ll definitely have a clearer picture.
Today we worked mainly on the set-up of the 248 F1, starting
from the information we’d gathered from the testing
we did here in February. All in all, we can say that the first
indications are fairly encouraging.”
Michael Schumacher: “It’s been
a fairly positive day for us. We’ve completed the programme
that we had planned for ourselves and we worked well, so I’m
obviously satisfied with the way things went. I think that,
compared to the other teams, we are looking competitive but
in order to see whether we really are quick enough to aim
for the top, we need to wait till everybody is running on
low fuel and with new tyres. I still reckon that there are
four teams capable of winning even if today perhaps some of
them didn’t want to reveal all their potential: what
is clear however is that Renault seem to be very quick straight
out of the box which gives them an edge.”
Felipe Massa: “Towards the end of
the second practice session I managed to find a good set-up
for the car. In the first session and during the first part
of the second one we were not really able to extract all the
potential out of the car. I think that I could have set an
even better time but on the whole I’m satisfied with
what we’ve achieved so far because I feel that we now
have a good foundation on which we can build in preparation
for tomorrow’s qualifying and the race on Sunday.”
Ross Brawn: “I think we found the
balance of the car fairly quickly, obviously we had the benefits
of the test because we’d done a lot of running here
during the last few weeks. The track seems to be pretty similar
to where we were with the test so that’s encouraging.
The tyres seem quite consistent. We had a little problem with
some flat-spotting on Felipe’s car. He’s got some
issues with the brakes we need to fix but towards the end
of the second session we think we found a good balance from
which to develop the car from now on. I think we’re
in reasonable shape at the moment. If we can keep everything
together tomorrow we should have a good race.”
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