Pre race comment
Fernando Alonso - "Hopefully we can repeat the performance we showed in China [this weekend] so that we can reach Q3 and fight for points in the race. It's still an early stage in the year and already the team has made incredible progress, which gives me the belief that we can still fight for the championship. We will have more updates when we get back to Europe, but at this stage in the year it's important that we score as many points as possible at each race so we can be in the fight at the end of the season.”
Nelson Piquet - “I really need to make sure I qualify well so that I can pick a good strategy for the race. If we get the new parts on my car in time for this weekend then I think reaching Q3 will be possible, which will put me in a good position to score points in the race. The team is working hard to develop the car and I'm sure we will be more competitive in Bahrain where I will be ready to take any opportunity that comes my way. If I'm honest it's not one of my favourite circuits although there are exciting parts of the lap such as turns five and six. . However, the location means that the track surface is always pretty dusty, especially off-line and so you can't afford to make a mistake and run wide without losing a lot of time. It's also one of the hotter races of the year so it's quite physically demanding, although it's dry heat rather than the humidity you get in Malaysia."
Bob Bell (Renault’s technical director) - “I think we can be quite confident that we can repeat the sort of performance we showed in China during qualifying as we now have the basic pace in the car. And if we have a dry race, I'm confident that we can bring home the points from the race to match our qualifying performance.” About the diffuser - “It certainly lived up to expectations and gave us the gains we expected. There is more to come as the diffuser is a very new area of development and there will be a big push to continue its development over the next few months. Nelson will have the new diffuser in time for Bahrain. It simply wasn't possible to make two in time for China last weekend. I think that we did a great job to get one out to China. We're also working on various upgrades to other parts of the car that we would normally work on at this time of year.”
About the circuit - “It's a challenging circuit and I have some good memories of my wins there in 2005 and 2006 with Renault. Because of the circuit's location, it can get quite dusty and the conditions change from lap to lap so you need to be careful, but there are still some good overtaking opportunities, especially into turn one and turn four. It's one of the most demanding circuits on the brakes with lots of big braking zones and so we will look at the wear rates on Friday to make sure we don't have any problems in the race.”
Jarno Trulli - "I am looking forward to racing in Bahrain after the tests we had there over the winter. Bahrain was the first chance I had to really test the TF109 in dry conditions and I knew immediately we had a competitive package, which has proved to be the case now the season has started. In testing the car was strong in Bahrain so I have a good feeling for this weekend and I think we can be competitive. Weather and track conditions change from winter testing to the race weekend but it should still help us a bit to have set-up information from the new car at this track, and we have quite a bit of experience now with these two compounds of tyre."
Timo Glock - "I definitely have a much better feeling with the slick tyres. Last year one of the main points I had to work on was understanding the grooved tyres because they behave very differently to slicks and I didn't have so much experience of them. For me it has been no problem to move back; I have driven nearly my whole career on slicks so it makes life easier this season. Of course, with the different compounds for each race, it is still a big challenge to get the best out of the tyres, but I feel at home on slicks. From a personal point of view it was really positive to be on the podium in just the second race but it also gave the team consecutive podiums after Jarno's third place in Australia," said Glock. China was a little disappointing overall but it has been great to start the season with a competitive car which is capable of fighting for podiums. I am happy with my performances; I've scored a lot of points already despite some difficult circumstances."
Pascal Vasselon (Toyota's chassis division) - "We achieved a huge amount of laps in Bahrain during testing and this was very useful in terms of developing the TF109. It should also be useful for this weekend because we have some experience of set-up and slick tyres at this track with the new cars, so we should hit the ground running on Friday. We tested both tyre compounds when we were in Bahrain in February and they performed well in representative temperature conditions so we're not expecting any major problems in that area."
Felipe Massa - "We are in a different condition than we were in the past, but I still believe in the team"I think we have a good possibility to get away from this problem. I'm very motivated to help the team to get away from that, and I will do my best. I will work even harder for the team to try to motivate them and to try to push them to get away from this really difficult moment. We are all human beings - anybody can have difficult times. I had many difficult times in the beginning of my career, so I remember very well how it is. For the moment we have two issues - One is that we need to improve the car and make the car quicker. - The second is that we need to make the car reliable, because you can have the quickest car in the world but if you don't finish the race it doesn't matter. I think those are the two most important points we need to work to improve as quickly as possible. I feel a lot more comfortable in Bahrain and I think we can be more competitive there."
Niko Rosberg - “Bahrain is one of my favourite tracks. Last year the car went well there and we won’t have any issues with warming up the tyres. We’re confident going to Bahrain that we can finally get a good result.”
Sam Michael (Williams technical director) - “It’s wasn’t our best performance (China). As a team, we made mistakes which we will be investigating this week at the factory before heading to Bahrain. The decision [to pit under the safety car] cost us a couple of positions but it wasn't the main reason why we didn't perform well in China. In the end, we were just too slow in the wet. Our long-run pace was really good, but we weren’t good enough in qualifying.
We have a strong car at the moment and we really need to start capitalising on that and getting some points on the board.”
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