Sakhir, 19 April 2013: Kimi Räikkönen went fastest for Lotus F1 Team on the opening day of action here at round four of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship; the Bahrain Grand Prix. Kimi set a 1min 34.154secs lap using the medium compound tyres in hot conditions during the Friday afternoon practice session. Romain Grosjean – who is using a new chassis for this weekend – set the seventh fastest time of the day.
Paul di Resta of Sahara Force India continued his good run with a P5 in both the free practice sessions. Adrian Sutil finished P7 and P8 respectivley.
Alan Permane, Lotus F1 team, Trackside Operations Director – Technical programme notes
Both drivers ran with the latest front wing specification, as debuted by Romain in China.
Kimi evaluated new rear suspension components during the morning session.
Pirelli’s hard (orange) compound tyre was used in the first session, the hard and medium (white) tyres in the afternoon.
Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus, fastest in FP2 on Friday at Sakhir ahead of Bahrain GP. A Lotus F1 photo.
What we learned today:
The latest front wing works well.
We are analysing the data from the new rear suspension components.
The car looks good with both tyre compounds.
Kimi Räikkönen, E21-03 Free practice 1: P9, 1:35.345, 17 laps Free practice 2: P1, 1:34.154, 31 laps
Sahara Force India adds:
Paul Di Resta VJM06-04
FP1: 1:34.949 P5 15 laps
FP2: 1:34.543 P5 35 laps
Paul: “As Fridays go it’s been positive and we’ve achieved as much as we could realistically have hoped for. The car is working well and responding as we expected, and we’ve already got a reasonable idea of where we stand. There is still some optimising to do, as always, but if we can take another step forward tonight we should be in a strong position going into qualifying.”
Adrian Sutil VJM06-03
FP1: 1:35.119 P7 17 laps
FP2: 1:34.932 P9 33 laps
Adrian: “Lots of laps and lots of things to evaluate today, but I’m still not totally comfortable with the car – either for short or long runs. It all feels very low grip at the moment so the set-up is not quite right for me yet. As for the tyres, there are no real concerns. My long runs looked competitive and both the medium and hard compounds seem to be working well for us in the high temperatures – as they did in Malaysia.”
Jakob Andreasen, Chief Race Engineer
“A very straightforward couple of sessions and overall we are feeling happy with how things have gone. The aero programme this morning helped to address some of the unanswered questions from China and allowed us to learn more about some of the new parts we have tried on the car recently. We also tested all our cooling solutions and don’t anticipate any issues during the race. As usual, we switched to tyre evaluation this afternoon and both cars managed to complete long runs on both tyre compounds. It was a slick session and sets us up nicely for tomorrow. With a few more tweaks overnight we should be able to keep up the momentum and get both cars in Q3 tomorrow afternoon.”
