Australian Grand Prix – Melbourne, 16th March 2007
Free practice – First session
Driver Pos. Time Laps Chassis
F. Massa 2nd 1.30.707 7 260
K. Raikkonen 19th 1.39.242 7 261
Weather: air temperature 20/22 °C, track temperature 22/24
°C, damp track, overcast.
Free Practice – Second session
Driver Pos. Time Laps Chassis
F. Massa 1st 1.27.353 32 260
K. Raikkonen 2nd 1.27.750 33 261
Weather: air temperature 21 °C, track temperature 27/25
°C, dry track, overcast.
 Felipe
Massa: “It was a good day. We did a good job
of comparing the two types of dry weather tyre and this morning
we also got the opportunity to run in the wet, which led us
to see that the balance of the F2007 is pretty good. This
was a positive start to the weekend, but of course what counts
is tomorrow’s qualifying and most of all, Sunday’s
race.”
Kimi Raikkonen: “We worked mainly
on comparing the two types of tyre that we have, but I was
a bit unlucky with the traffic and the red flag, which affected
our programme. In any case, the car seems to be well balanced
at this track and we managed to pick up a good base line of
data to analyse today for qualifying and for the race.”
Luca Baldisserri: “The Championship
has got off in a different fashion to the past, with Friday
based around three hours of testing, divided into two ninety
minute sessions and sporting regulations that call for the
use of both types of tyre during the race and a duty cycle
for the engines consisting of running on Saturday and Sunday
in two consecutive Grands Prix, but allowing therefore for
a change of engine after these 180 minutes of free practice.
We are reasonably satisfied with the work we have done today,
when the sessions were characterised by quite changeable weather
conditions. We concentrated on tyre comparison, both in terms
of performance over a single lap and on longer runs. Felipe
was able to complete his planned programme, but Kimi was held
up by the interruption halfway through the second session.
All the same, we picked up a lot of data that will be useful
for the rest of the weekend. The F2007 cars ran trouble free
and seem well balanced. All in all, we can look to tomorrow’s
qualifying with reasonable confidence, while aware of all
the questions that are still unanswered after free practice.”
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