Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Nürburgring practices 05.07.2013: German Grand Prix Nürburgring - 05/07/2013 PRACTICE Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton finished in second and eighth

German Grand Prix  Nürburgring - 05/07/2013 PRACTICE



 
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton finished in second and eighth places respectively today after the first practice session for the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring circuit.


•    Nico and Lewis completed a total of 123 laps today, equivalent to just over two race distances, on the new Pirelli tyres

•    Both drivers found an understeer balance during the day, which the team will work to improve overnight



Drivers    No.    Chassis No.    Practice 1    Practice 2

Nico Rosberg     9     F1 W04 / 03     25 laps     1:31.973     P2     38 laps     1:30.651     P2

Lewis Hamilton     10     F1 W04 / 04     25 laps     1:31.754     P1     35 laps     1:31.304     P8

Weather    Cool

Temperatures    Air: 16-19 °C    Track: 19-29 °C



Nico Rosberg

It's a great track and a lot of fun to drive here with my current Silver Arrow. It was an interesting day for us as we had to adapt to the new tyres. They are different and require a different set-up, so today was a good opportunity to learn something. We want to understand them quicker and better than the other teams.


Generally it seems that we are quick again over one lap and the long run was not bad. It's difficult to predict where we are, because you never know exactly about the fuel levels of the others. Also it's going to get warmer on Sunday and this could change also the whole picture again.
 


Lewis Hamilton

It's been a reasonable day of practice for us. This morning went pretty well and the car felt good, but then we made some changes which didn't quite work out for us this afternoon. The car felt a little off balance during P2 so we'll have a look into that overnight and probably backtrack on some of those changes for tomorrow. I'm sure we will be back on form for P3.
 


Ross Brawn

We had a good session of race preparation this afternoon, with our priority being to complete long runs with fuel on the new tyre construction. Both Lewis and Nico were running with understeer today, so we still have work to do to improve the car balance for them.


The circuit itself was picking up grip quite quickly and we didn't quite get the set-up correct as we tried to track it. However, the priority was to collect plenty of information about the new tyres for both tomorrow and Sunday, which we managed to do. The car seemed reasonably competitive and that's reassuring, as we know there is still more performance to be found when the drivers are fully comfortable with the car.
 


Toto Wolff

We had a solid first day in the cool conditions here. The new tyres ran without any incidents and we learned a lot about them, even if there are clearly some areas where we can still improve. The car balance was not great but both Lewis and Nico seemed quite competitive, so hopefully we can take another step forward tomorrow.


The weather is forecast to warm up, so we will need to make the right changes tonight in order to anticipate the warmer conditions over the weekend.
 

 
 
Nicola Armstrong , Bradley Lord ,Wolfgang Schattling - photo Mercedes