F1's newcomers Caterham, Marussia and HRT were slowest in Bahrain while Force India did not even set a time...
Caterham:
Vitaly Petrov: "Bahrain is where I made my F1 debut back in 2010 so it's a track that means a lot to me. I had great support when we last raced there and I'm sure it'll be the same this year with Caterham F1 Team. From the driver's point of view it's a pretty technical circuit and one where you need to have a really good balance and make sure you nail every apex to get the best lap times in. That's particularly true in the last sector and if you can get that right you can make up, and lose, a lot of time there. The sand obviously affects everyone the same, and it'll be interesting on Saturday to see how late everyone leaves their Q1 runs. The track gets more and more quick with every lap, and that means you have to be pretty bold with your strategy to make sure you give yourself the best possible shot at a good quali lap."
Heikki Kovalainen: "Bahrain is another one of the typical modern circuits. It doesn't have any really challenging corners and you can push hard for most of the lap, particularly over the kerbs which are pretty easy on the cars. As the track surface is rubbered in grip levels improve dramatically, so you'll see laptimes dropping fast over the weekend, and that means you have to be on it for qualifying, to make sure you can get the most of out the session. Apart from the track conditions, one of the main technical areas we will be focusing on in Bahrain is braking. The high ambient temperatures and the nature of the track mean we will be spending quite a lot of Friday's practice sessions managing brake cooling and wear rates, so we are as well prepared as possible for qualifying and the race."
Marussia:
Timo Glock: "A very difficult day today, especially in FP2. This morning we had a fairly normal programme developing and monitoring the new parts to help move the car forward. We completed a lot of aero work so we were getting good data and numbers out of the car, but it was looking ahead rather than specific to this weekend. FP2 was difficult with the tyres. They were dropping quickly and affecting the rear stability on the long run. The car is still a bit too difficult to drive at the moment, so we have to find a way to make it better. In general not the best start so far; in the last few races we have had better Fridays. There's still a lot of work to do overnight to make improvements on the car for tomorrow."
Charles Pic: "Today I have been focusing on what we need to do to prepare for the race, evaluating the tyre options with fuel and looking at what we can do to manage the brakes and the tyre wear. By splitting the programme it means we have a lot of data to look at tonight but I think everyone up and down the field has the same challenge."
HRT:
Pedro de la Rosa: "We can say we met our target for the day which was none other than to check that the changes we've made to the cooling of the car worked very well, which reassures us because it means we can face the weekend with guarantees. Leaving that aside, we suffered quite a bit of degradation to the rear tyres, but I think everyone faced that. That is due to the heat and the type of track. We tested soft and medium tyres and for the long run we divided our work with Narain, him on mediums and myself on softs, to cover both options and see which one is best. We improved the car's balance as the day wore on and I'm satisfied but tomorrow we should be able to fine-tune things a bit more."
Narain Karthikeyan: "Today we tried out a lot of different options to save the tyres because it's very hot out there and they degrade quickly. And we worked on that objective in these two practice sessions. Apart from the work with both Pirelli options, we covered a lot of laps to see if the car is overheating, but it seems to be doing fine. Tomorrow we will change things a bit and adapt the car for the race and, although the weather conditions are a bit extreme, it responded well today, and hopefully we can keep that going for the rest of the weekend."
Force India:
Paul di Resta: "The track was very green and dusty to begin with, but we got on with the programme quickly and did the usual balance work, cooling checks and got a feel for both the medium and the soft tyres. The baseline set-up was not a long way off, but our focus for tomorrow is to improve our performance in the low-speed corners."
Nico Hulkenberg: "It was a different approach to FP1 today and we made sure we ran all three sets of tyres to get the data we need for the race. The session went okay and the car felt quite good out of the box, although there is still some fine-tuning to do in FP3."
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