HRT drivers Vitantonio Liuzzi and Daniel Ricciardo finished today's sessions in respectable positions with Liuzzi as finishing as high as 18th in FP1 and Riccardio finishing 23rd in FP2.
Veteran driver Liuzzi also reiterated the thoughts of many drivers that Spa had once again delivered irritating weather conditions “It is good to be back although we haven't had the sessions we were hoping for. Today was a typical day at Spa with unpredictable weather and it is a shame that we couldn't test as much as we wanted. We understood a few things about the car under wet conditions but, of course, we would have liked to have a lot more information on the dry”.
The cars were as usual only able to do a few laps as they began to mean very little in terms of set up information “We were only able to do five laps in these conditions but I am sure we could have gone quicker with a few more. We have some ideas about which direction to go and we appear to be quite strong in wet conditions. We have to be ready for any conditions but tomorrow and Sunday could be the same”
Young driver and Red Bull Reserve Daniel Ricciardo admitted whilst the weather was expected they were hoping for better “We were expecting it to be a bit wet but it would have been nice if it was either wet or dry, not in between. At least we were able to complete runs in the afternoon with soft, intermediate and extreme wet tyres, which was quite positive although they were very short runs. When we wanted to do a change to the set-up the weather always changed too, so that was a bit frustrating. But it wasn't a bad first day and we'll see how it goes tomorrow”.
Colin Kolles, Team Principal said that the weather meant that they were unable to make the progress that they were expecting: “The rain made us change and we adapted our working program from lap to lap. This afternoon we managed getting some more running time for the drivers to optimize our preparation for qualifying. The weather is often hard to predict here, but it looks like we seem to be on the wet side for qualifying. I am satisfied with what we have achieved here so far. We learned a bit in all conditions”.
