Sauber drivers Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella finished 16th and 17th respectively after today's first practice sessions for the German Grand Prix.

Giancarlo Fisichella: "The balance of the car was still not good this afternoon. I had oversteer going into the hairpin which turned to understeer at the midpoint. It wasn't so bad in the higher-speed corners, but we still have work to do to improve things."

Felipe Massa: "It was a good day for me. We focused on long runs and my first impression is that things are better than I expected. The tyre choice is not straightforward, but our race pace today was good. Qualifying, however, will be difficult for us."

Peter Sauber (Team Principal): "We concentrated on race set-up work today and I believe that we are now well prepared. We have a lot of data to analyse before we make our tyre selection this evening, and tomorrow morning we will focus on honing the car for qualifying."