Sébastien Buemi admitted that his first outing at Istanbul Park track in a 2.4 litre V8 Formula One car was not an easy one. The Swiss driver, F1's only rookie of the year, finished last of the twenty runners in both Friday sessions, having previously driven the Turkish track in GP2 cars only.
Completing 26 laps in the morning session, 20-year-old Sébastien - the youngest driver in the field - drove another 37 later on in the day. "My first day in an F1 car at this track was a very difficult one," he admitted. "On the plus side, we had no mechanical problems, so we did high mileage; at least that means we have a lot of data to analyse to work out why we are slow and hopefully find a better setup for tomorrow.
"At the moment, it's difficult to say where we are, although obviously we are not where we want to be. The main problem today was that we could not get the most out of the tyres. Compared to the others, we are not too bad on a long run but on new tyres it wasn't working 100 per cent." Team-mate Sébastien Bourdais had an equally tough day, however, with 19th place in both sessions.
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