Ferrari's Felipe Massa unsurprisingly had no complaints at the end of the opening day of the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
The Brazilian was in a class of his own, topping the times in both sessions and ending the day easily quickest overall, on a 1 minute 31.420 seconds, the only driver to get below the 1min 32sec bracket.
He was also almost a second up on his team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen, who was second in the sister F2008, as both seemingly made a great start, although how much they have been helped by that test at the Sakhir circuit back in February is open to debate.
Speaking at the end of the day's proceedings Felipe was clearly delighted, especially as he has had a rough start to the year.
He will now want to use this as a spring-board to ensure he opens his points account on Sunday.
"I am pleased with this first day of free practice. Right from the start this morning, I found some good settings for the car and then, in the afternoon, the track conditions improved considerably," he noted.
"I think we are working in the right direction in terms of setting up the car and so I feel confident about the rest of the weekend.
"I like this track and think we will be very competitive. The wind is expected to be stronger tomorrow and on Sunday and that would make driving more difficult, but on the plus side, there will be more grip."
Raikkonen was also content even if he did have to play second fiddle to Massa in both sessions.
"All in all, I am happy with the way things went this morning and even more so with the afternoon," he continued. "We tried various different set-ups, starting off with the settings we defined when testing here in February. We picked up a lot of data to work with for qualifying and the race.
"The car is going well and I think we will be competitive even if it is always difficult to say where we are compared to the others. The performance of both types of tyre is reasonably similar." Ferrari team principal, Stefano Domenicali meanwhile remains cautious and is no doubt mindful that you don't get any points from the Friday of a grand prix weekend.
"It was a good day, but it's too early to draw any conclusions regarding the final outcome of this weekend," he warned. "We worked well, without any particular niggles and now we must concentrate on preparation for qualifying and the race."
crash.net
The Brazilian was in a class of his own, topping the times in both sessions and ending the day easily quickest overall, on a 1 minute 31.420 seconds, the only driver to get below the 1min 32sec bracket.
He was also almost a second up on his team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen, who was second in the sister F2008, as both seemingly made a great start, although how much they have been helped by that test at the Sakhir circuit back in February is open to debate.
Speaking at the end of the day's proceedings Felipe was clearly delighted, especially as he has had a rough start to the year.
He will now want to use this as a spring-board to ensure he opens his points account on Sunday.
"I am pleased with this first day of free practice. Right from the start this morning, I found some good settings for the car and then, in the afternoon, the track conditions improved considerably," he noted.
"I think we are working in the right direction in terms of setting up the car and so I feel confident about the rest of the weekend.
"I like this track and think we will be very competitive. The wind is expected to be stronger tomorrow and on Sunday and that would make driving more difficult, but on the plus side, there will be more grip."
Raikkonen was also content even if he did have to play second fiddle to Massa in both sessions.
"All in all, I am happy with the way things went this morning and even more so with the afternoon," he continued. "We tried various different set-ups, starting off with the settings we defined when testing here in February. We picked up a lot of data to work with for qualifying and the race.
"The car is going well and I think we will be competitive even if it is always difficult to say where we are compared to the others. The performance of both types of tyre is reasonably similar." Ferrari team principal, Stefano Domenicali meanwhile remains cautious and is no doubt mindful that you don't get any points from the Friday of a grand prix weekend.
"It was a good day, but it's too early to draw any conclusions regarding the final outcome of this weekend," he warned. "We worked well, without any particular niggles and now we must concentrate on preparation for qualifying and the race."
crash.net