Productive start for McLaren

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso finished Friday's second free practice session for the Santander British Grand Prix in Silverstone in fourth and sixth positions respectively. Lewis completed 39 laps and set a time of 1min21.381 whilst Fernando did 35 laps with a best time of 1min21.616. In the morning session, Lewis was fastest with 1min21.100 (24 laps) and Fernando was fourth with 1min21.675 (21 laps).

Fernando Alonso "Today has been quite windy and with Silverstone being such a flat circuit it really can affect the balance of the car; this is why we saw so many people, including myself, going off at some point today. As usual we were working on the set-up of the car and assessing the two Bridgestone Potenza tyre compounds for this weekend and we completed our planed programme. The work has been good, and I am happy with the results so far. We seem to be competitive and the car is working very well here, so hopefully we will have a strong weekend in front of all the people coming from Woking and Brixworth."

Lewis Hamilton "It is great to be here at my first home Grand Prix and to be driving a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 car in front of all the British supporters. Today has been really positive, and the work we have done seems to be taking us in the right direction. The car feels great to drive around this track, which is one of my favourites, and I am looking forward to the rest of the weekend where I expect us to remain strong. We gathered a lot of useful data which we will look at overnight and then continue our work tomorrow."

Ron Dennis "A productive start to McLaren’s home Grand Prix, where we did a lot of laps and completed the planned programme. As is often the case in the UK, the weather has proved to be less than ideal, but we will see what the rest of the weekend brings. So far so good, and we look forward to tomorrow."

Norbert Haug "We looked good on the time sheet of the morning session and not so much in the afternoon. We went through our planned programme and concentrated on race set up and tyre comparisons. We found a good base to further work from tomorrow."