Pastor Maldonado expects to be competitive in qualifying tomorrow despite ending Friday afternoon in seventeenth place. The Venezuelan was 1.9s off the pace but stressed that the change between FP1 and FP2 was down to an experimental set-up and isn’t worried about his pace tomorrow.
“The car felt good today; we were alternating the strategy between the two sessions, as we were trying different things, which meant we lost a bit of performance against this morning. However, I think we’ll be competitive in qualifying tomorrow. We just need to work through the data to get the set-up right, but I feel confident heading into tomorrow.”
Williams teammate Bruno Senna was thirteenth fastest and wasn’t quite as confident as Maldonado despite the support of the home crowd.
“It was quite a tough session today as we didn’t get as much information as we would have liked for tomorrow. We’ve got some work to do to understand how we can do things better to make sure we’re competitive for tomorrow, as the grid is very close here. It’s very hot today but it was great to see all my home fans out there, even with sweat in my eyes!”
Reserve driver Valtteri Bottas drove Senna’s car in the morning once again and enjoyed the challenge that the Sao Paulo circuit presented.
“Today were predominantly doing some tests for next year which mainly involved doing short runs just to gather data. It was interesting to feel the difference on the new 2013 tyres and we will now go away and analyse the data from FP1. The last run was slightly busy with traffic but it’s great to experience this track for the first time as it was really enjoyable to drive.”
