Red Bull failed to exert their usual dominance of Friday practice sessions today in Valencia, with Sebastian Vettel finishing the day only third fastest whilst Mark Webber was down in seventh.
Webber did the top timesheets in the morning session though, but Vettel was way down in sixteenth.
“Sometimes you try different things, which is normal on a Friday – there were no secrets from us today,” Vettel insisted. “This morning we were running a different programme, but this afternoon we were on the same page as the others.
“It was very tight with the times, but I had a very good feeling in the car. Much better this afternoon, so we'll see what we can do tomorrow. We had a good race here last year, but it was close with Lewis and Fernando, it's changing from race to race, but lets see.”
This weekend sees the first use of the Pirelli medium tyre at a race weekend. Webber thought they were alright: “We used the medium tyres in the first session and they weren't too bad,” said the Australian. “The first session went okay; there were a lot of different people testing a lot of different things with different fuel loads.
“In P2, it was more straightforward. We had a slow start to P2 and then went out on the option tyre. The long run went well and we got lots of information for the race on Sunday, the track temperatures are likely to be different on Sunday, but it's still useful.”
