Planet-F1

Fri: Williams, STR, Force India, Toyota

Friday 5th September 2008

There were top ten places in Spa's practice for Nico Rosberg, Seb Vettel, Adrian Sutil and Jarno Trulli.

Williams
Nico Rosberg: The morning didn't start too well and we weren't looking so good, so we made some big set-up changes over lunch and we definitely improved and found some clear direction. We have some new development parts on the car, which have helped our pace even if the conditions have been too variable to really get the most out of them today. If I think about it, our experience today has been much like last year when we struggled here on Friday but improved a lot over the course of the weekend. So we have taken some good steps forward today, but of course we still need to find some more performance tomorrow to close up to those in front of us."

Kazuki Nakajima: In the morning, conditions weren't too bad, even if we had to improve our lap times considerably. We made some set-up changes, but I found this afternoon was much trickier. I was struggling to get a good feeling from the car. I'll be looking to find overall grip in tomorrow's practice session, and if I manage to do this, then I will be able to push more."

Toro Rosso
Sebastian Vettel: It was an interesting day and as expected, the weather made for some pretty strange conditions. Especially in the afternoon, it was important that we got some dry laps, to get another look at how the car was performing, having made some changes to it, as I was not completely happy with it in the morning. The afternoon showed it was much better. I thought it was cool to drive in these conditions as you have no margin for error: 10 centimetres the wrong way and you can crash. You have to be very precise and it demands very accurate driving. When you push, you start to feel your balls in your pants! It was interesting and I like it."

Sebastien Bourdais: This is the most beautiful track, but the conditions are often a pain in the arse and with the dry tyres in the drizzle we had this afternoon, if you touched the white line you would crash. So I didn't take any risks, especially as you don't learn much in these conditions. The morning session was quite good and now we just have to find a solution to the fact I am locking the rears. Apart from that, we have found a reasonable balance and I feel happy with that as I think we were quite competitive this morning and in general, we look in good shape."

Force India
Adrian Sutil: In the end I could put together a good lap and now at least we have some idea about the balance in these type of conditions. This morning was OK but we lost the final few minutes of the session with a broken damper and couldn't improve the time from the first run. At least we had some more tyres to use in the afternoon, but then unfortunately the rain started and it was difficult to judge when we could go out."

Giancarlo Fisichella: It was a shame we could not do more laps in the drying conditions in the afternoon. Unfortunately I was coming out of turn eight and just came on to a really wet part of the track on dry tyres. The car just snapped away and there wasn't anything I could do to catch it before it went into the barriers. Until that point it had been a fairly normal day, we were finding a good balance and getting used to the tyres and I think we could have got a good time in the drier conditions at the end of the session."

Toyota
Jarno Trulli: It was a bit of a difficult day for me. I lost part of the morning session with a technical problem so I lost a lot of running when the track was dry and then in the afternoon unfortunately I couldn't do much because the session was hampered by the poor weather. So in the end there is very little we have learned from today's sessions. I hope this will be a good weekend for us but of course it depends on how the car suits the track and there are many other variables, such as the weather and the track temperature, which do affect things. I hope we can keep up the momentum from recent races and be strong again."

Timo Glock: Today was pretty tricky in general, especially with the weather which didn't make it easy in the afternoon. We still have to work on the car because I am not completely happy with the set-up at the moment. The cold conditions didn't help us. We made a little step forward on the last run but there is still improvement to be made. We have to wait and see how it goes tomorrow. This is usually one of the most exciting races of the year so I am looking forward to racing here and even though today was a bit difficult, the conditions were the same for all drivers so I am still reasonably optimistic."