Formula One news

Mixed day for Toro Rosso

Scuderia Toro Rosso had a mixed first day of practice at the Brazilian Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel set a strong sixth fastest time while Sebastien Bourdais ended up seventeenth.

"Free practice was mainly dry, but conditions were tricky in the drizzle: you would see the drops on your visor and wouldn't know how far you could go," Vettel said. "We made a big step, improving the car from the morning to the afternoon. I think here it will be quite tricky to get the tyres working well over a long run and you could see several people struggling with that. Towards the end, you could see the grooved tyres become slick tyres, so maybe we're already getting ready for 2009!" 

Sébastien Bourdais added, "I know this track from having raced here in F3000 in '01 and '02 and it's less bumpy now, although it still seems to have quite a slippery surface, especially when we had a bit of rain. Those conditions made it a bit difficult to evaluate how the car was reacting and how the track was evolving and therefore it was tricky to assess whether any performance gains came from changes on the car or on the track surface. Generally, it's been a decent day, even if I didn't get the balance right on the Option tyre. Most of the day me and Seb were fairly evenly matched until the big gap came when I made a mistake on one quick lap at the last corner. But we have plenty of data to analyse to prepare ourselves for the race."

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