The Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel set the second and third fastest times during Friday practice in Turkey, just one tenth behind the McLaren of Jenson Button, who finished the day fastest.
Mark Webber’s day ended with another blown engine, but he is not concerned with this failure. The team have also been trying out their version of the McLaren F-duct for the first time today.
“The engine went at the end of P2, but it was a high mileage engine, so we were expecting it to be on the edge,” said Webber, who is looking for a third consecutive race win in Turkey this weekend.
“There's no hand brake on a F1 car so when I stopped I was trying to tell them [the marshals] to put something behind the wheel to stop the car rolling back. A frustrating thing to explain from within the car!
“We need to analyse the new F-duct system tonight, we know it's not the most straightforward of systems. The guys have done a phenomenal job to get it to this point and we're happy with how it went today but, whether we race it or not, we don't know yet.”
Sebastian Vettel was the only Red Bull driver to have the F-duct on his car today, and he was pleased with the additional performance it gave him. “It was a reasonable day – and quite tough as we introduced the F-duct. We still need to do some fine tuning, but it looks good.
“I think McLaren looks very competitive here, their system seems to be working well and they seem quite a bit quicker than everyone else on the straights. You can make up time in the corners, but there are quite a few straights joining them.
“We'll see if we keep our system on. It feels more natural now with the new chassis, it was good to change it and overall I was happy with the balance of the car.”
