Abu Dhabi GP: Practice notes - Mercedes

02/11/2012

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg completed the opening practice sessions today for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The first practice session took place in sunny conditions with the light fading to darkness during the second session. Michael and Nico completed 55 laps each of the 5.554 km Yas Marina Circuit. The team focused on set-up and tyre evaluations, along with work specifically targeted towards the 2013 season.

Nico Rosberg: That was a good testing day, and we were able to evaluate a lot of different things. Unfortunately we are still lacking some pace but I hope that we can achieve some points with a good strategy tomorrow and on Sunday. Generally tyre degradation is not as big as last year, so it will be interesting to see how the race turns out.

Michael Schumacher: Today we saw what I would call a 'normal' Friday - doing certain programmes, changing the set-up and typical data collection work. What we saw at the end of the day is probably where we are, so a pretty realistic picture. At the moment we are driving to finish in the points, and that is what we will target for the weekend. On a different note, it really is impressive and beautiful to drive here, and to drive from daytime into the night really is special.

Ross Brawn: We completed a very useful programme today, and worked through a number of evaluations, particularly looking ahead to next year. The balance of the car looks reasonable after the first two sessions, although there are some areas still in need of improvement. The midfield is very tight again, so we will work on our performance on new tyres to ensure that we can qualify as strongly as possible tomorrow. As always, the facilities here at the Yas Marina Circuit are extremely impressive, and the amount of fans enjoying the unique atmosphere is great to see.

Norbert Haug: A Friday test day for us with no surprises. We ran through our planned programme and at the end of the second session we performed long runs during a race simulation with quite consistent lap times.

Check out our Friday gallery, here.