China Friday quotes: Lotus
Luiz Razia - 23rd: "It was good to get back in the car and even though the suspension issue brought the session to an earlier end than we would have liked I could still feel that the car has taken a step forward since I last drove it in Barcelona. I was taking it steadily, aiming to bring the lap times down and give the team some useful feedback so it's a shame I couldn't complete the plan, but that's racing."
Heikki Kovalainen - 18th: "It's good to get through the whole day with no reliability issues and hopefully that sets us up well for the weekend ahead. The car had a good balance this morning but this afternoon the changes we made maybe didn't take us in the right direction so I wasn't quite as comfortable in FP2. I had a few issues with traffic on my performance run which meant I couldn't get everything out of it but having had a clear day we'll put in the work tonight as see where we are tomorrow."
Jarno Trulli -19th: "Clearly it's good that I had a trouble free afternoon but I am struggling a bit with the balance to be honest. We'll work on that tonight with the data we've generated today and with another clear session tomorrow we should be able to pick up where we left off in Malaysia."
Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader: "That was a good Friday engine-wise. We were able to set up the engines according to the driver requests and we worked through a program that tested a number of maps and the feedback we have had is good. We have definitely taken another step on from Sepang and as the ambient conditions here are less severe than in Malaysia the engine is consequently under less stress so I think we should be able to continue the progress through qualifying and into the race and maximise our performance across the weekend."
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: "That was a far more productive Friday than we have had in the two previous races this season and I think it is a measure of our increased competitiveness that we are actually a little disappointed with the overall pace. We ran Luiz Razia this morning and he did a good job for the team, despite having a suspension problem that brought his run to a premature end. With the race drivers we completed the full programme on each car but traffic interrupted both their runs on the soft tyres so we are a little disappointed that we were not able to show more pace that we know is in the cars. The tyres are working pretty well here - we have found our way around the warm up issues, so while today is satisfying in terms of reliability, there is definitely more to come tomorrow and we want to be pushing towards Q2."
Riad Asmat, Chief Executive Officer: "I think that was a pretty good day for the team. We put in the laps and have accumulated some good data on the tyres so I think we're in good shape for tomorrow and Sunday."
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