11 THOUSANDTHS SPLIT SEB AND KIMI

PRESS RELEASE/F1 Ferrari (Photo: Sebastian Vettel – Ferrari Press Office)

Sakhir, 6 April – At the end of the final Friday free practice session, the Scuderia Drivers were first and second with Kimi Raikkonen (1’29”817) and Sebastian Vettel (1’29”828) respectively. Both drivers concentrated on their programme, working first on a series of short runs before switching to long ones, using the Soft and Supersoft tyres. The action resumes at the Bahrain track tomorrow with the final free practice session at 14h00 CET, followed by qualifying at 17H00.

Kimi and Seb look ahead to the remainder of the weekend

Sakhir, March 6 – Topping the timesheets on Friday does not bring any points, and Scuderia Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel are well aware that the Bahraini weekend has just begun. Nevertheless, their comments after the first day of practice reflected the hard work that the whole team had carried out. Kimi had to pull off the track and stop the car right at the end of the session due to a loose front right wheel, when his pitwall promptly informed him that something wasn’t right.                                                        

“It was a pretty straightforward day and the car felt ok”, said Kimi. “As on any Friday, we tried different things, tested and learned as much as possible. The feeling was pretty much the same everywhere, but in certain zones of the track  we want to do better. If we look purely at lap times it was OK, but that doesn’t tell you much; It’s only the first day and it’s impossible to know what the others were doing. At the end of the second session, right after the pit-stop, I felt some vibrations in the car and the team told me to slow down and park the car. We found out that the front  wheel was a bit loose, so we had to stop. For sure we still have to improve;  tonight we’ll put all the data together to try and do even better”.

“It is difficult to say where we are just from one day of practice” Seb commented “but we did make some progress. In the long runs we can do better, so let’s see what happens tomorrow. We made some mistakes here and there, but we tried to get the rhythm for qualifying. This is the time you need to try and take the car to the limit, especially this evening because conditions are the same as those you will have tomorrow and on Sunday night. I don’t have any conclusions to draw after the results we got today. We focus on ourselves and mostly try to get a better feeling with the car, as we still have some work to do, but I think we can improve further”.