Sauber drivers Felipe Massa and Jacques Villeneuve finished 12th and 17th respectively after today's first practice sessions for the United States Grand Prix.

Jacques Villeneuve: "Felipe and I were on different programmes today because of doing the tyre assessment, but the long runs were comparable. I would say the choice is pretty easy now, looking at the one-lap performance. The track is always a bit funny here the first day, but my car was drivable so I can't complain too much."

Felipe Massa: "On new tyres the balance of my car was good, but on the long run it was difficult to drive. It was very twitchy, with lots of oversteer and poor traction. That's why I had those two spins, which I don't think is normal for me. I know the track had low grip today, but we have more work to do setting up the car for the race."

Willy Rampf (Technical Director): "Today we did our usual Friday programme, making tyre comparisons with long and short runs and assessing the degree of degradation. The level of grip was not very good this morning, which is normal here, but that improved this afternoon so we had reasonable conditions in which to make our comparisons, and no technical problems to impede our schedule."