Sutil crashes into barriers at Copse
The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team has concluded a productive opening day of its 'home' Grand Prix at Silverstone, with Christijan Albers and Adrian Sutil completing over 600km and finishing the day just over one second from the top 10. Unfortunately the day was marred slightly in the last part of the second session when Adrian Sutil ran wide at the first corner, Copse, and into the barriers.
Under grey, cloudy skies Christijan completed 30 laps in the first session and 35 in the latter as he evaluated set-ups and the medium and hard Bridgestone Potenza tyres available this weekend. Adrian similarly worked through his development programme until his brush with the barriers brought his day to a premature end.
After a final one hour practice session tomorrow morning, Qualifying will start at 13:00 local time.
Adrian Sutil "We started off well in the beginning but then we had some problems with the harder tyre compound that really did not seem to work. Then we made some changes to the set-up but the car had a lot of understeer and was very difficult to drive. Then I lost it in Copse and crashed into the barriers, but fortunately it was not a big incident. In the middle of the second session a few drops of rain fell when I went out on the hard tyres but it did not really affect the lap times, maybe by only a couple of tenths. I hope we can improve tomorrow."
Christijan Albers "We had a good day today. We could do some long runs to look how the tyres react over longer distances and I was happier with the balance. Although I'm still not really, really satisfied with the set-up there is still another day tomorrow where it's possible to improve. Hopefully it will go OK in Qualifying,"
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer "A fairly productive day that was frustrated at the end by the shunt. We had a reasonable balance over both sessions and had no real mechanical issues on either cars, and the good news is that we were reasonably competitive with the group in front of us. Unfortunately though, Adrian has ensured that our composite department will not be bored."
