22/06/2012
NEWS STORY
Timo Glock has been fighting a stomach bug since yesterday, but he felt well enough to take part in FP1 this morning to help with the gathering of vital data for the rest of the weekend. The team were keen to ensure he didn't rush his recovery, so the programme for today was reworked to give Charles Pic the lion's share of the race preparation work and Timo concentrated on honing car set-up. In turn, this provided Charles with a challenging but interesting day's running and he was pleased with the progress made with the balance of his car, despite a slightly more comprehensive job list.
Timo ended the day in P21 after completing rather more running than he might have envisaged last night. Charles was P22 after the FP2 session.
Timo Glock: "I have to be quite pleased with the work I have done today, as it has not been an easy day of Free Practice for me. I seem to have picked up a stomach bug over the last couple of days and for a time I have to say I was feeling quite unwell. Back in the car today I have felt a little better and I am hopeful that I am on the mend. With the programme I worked through, the car was performing well for me, so a good start in that respect. My plan now is to work through the data so I have plenty to sleep on while I concentrate on recovering for a new day tomorrow."
Charles Pic: "A very interesting day for me as my programme was slightly different to normal. The engineers changed things around quite a bit to help Timo's recovery, which meant that I was doing more of the race preparation work. This was good for me and I am happy with what was a slightly more diverse plan. In the end, we seem to have a good set-up direction and with the amount of running we did, we have plenty of data to explore this evening. I think once we have looked at this and we are back in sync tomorrow, we will find that we have recovered some of what we lost in Canada and we can start to work on the gap to the cars in front of us again. For me, a good start, and I am happy that there is more we can achieve this weekend."
John Booth, Team Principal: "This morning, prior to FP1, we obviously had some work to do to reshape our programme in order to ease the pressure on Timo. Although he was feeling better than he had been, we felt it best not to overload him and cause any setbacks in his recovery. He did a fantastic job in difficult circumstances and seemed to feel okay when he was driving the car. All credit to him for completing 21 laps this afternoon and being able to demonstrate good pace at this stage. Similar credit to Charles however, as he picked up the reins, broke the back of the race preparation programme and has made good progress on set-up. Across the board there is more to come, we feel, and a night spent poring over the data, coupled with a good night's rest for Timo, should see us back in our normal stride tomorrow. The track conditions should also have improved by then as the circuit was very dirty this morning and took a while to clean up. The early indications, despite a less than straightforward day, are that our pace here is closer to what we expect following our low downforce blip in Canada."
Check out our Friday gallery, here