Friday: A good start to the weekend for McLaren
The first day of testing at the Italian Grand Prix saw McLaren quite in good form on the Monza track. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are pleased with their car's performance, but they hope to further improve the setup tomorrow ahead of the qualifying and the race.
Lewis Hamilton – 6th and 1st:
Monza is a magnificent circuit and the whole place has such history – you can feel it as soon as you pass through the entrance gates. And it’s, obviously, a sensational place to drive – the speeds are incredible and, when you are smooth, it’s just extraordinary. It’s really very, very fast.
It’s something that’s also disappointing; a map of the circuit makes it look like something simple, but in reality, it’s really very technical. It’s also very bumpy, which means it’s very difficult to gain those few hundredths on a fast lap.
And that’s really what it was about today; we tried to tweak the balance and find small improvements in our times. It’s incredibly tight.
Overall, it has been a productive day and everything went well. We are not in a bad position, and we hope to continue improving a few small things on the car for tomorrow.
Jenson Button – 2nd and 2nd:
« Monza is so different from the other places we race. The straight-line speeds are incredibly high – in fact, there are four places where we reach 322 km/h. It’s satisfying to have some running in the dry today because it allowed us to gather interesting data.
We tried different directions with the settings this afternoon – some better than others – but we will decide what works best before free practice 3 tomorrow and make the necessary adjustments to have a good balance. I’m quite comfortable with the car; you always want more, but we’ve done a good job today.
Looking at the data, there are a few teams that are fast here as well; it’s very close and it should make for an interesting race.
