Sam Michael Quotations

Now we will prepare the car for tomorrow's qualifying when we expect to be competing as a front-runner.

I feel good about tomorrow and seventh isn't such a bad place to start the race from. I would have liked to be a position or two higher on the grid but I'm looking forward to it.

Today, Mark and Nico were both on duty in Barcelona. Both drivers concentrated on long runs, working on set-up, brake and tyre development. Nico will be joined by Alex for tomorrow's final day of the four day test.

He should be fine. We'll talk to him again after this race weekend and if he is okay next week, then we'll want him to run for a day at Silverstone.

Mark and Nico both worked on tire testing, while Nico also did some brake cooling work. We had a small problem with the gearbox on Mark's car which was the only hindrance as it cost us some downtime during the day.

It is disappointing that we had to retire both cars from the race. However, after the two rear tyre incidents on each car, we had no choice. It is too early to speculate what the cause is but we are looking into it now with our tyre partner, Michelin.

We tested some new aerodynamic parts for the FW28 this week and confirmed they are all working as expected.

At such an early stage to have the fastest lap in Bahrain and now have both cars on the second row for the second grand prix in Malaysia with so many new partnerships is great for the team.

The most important thing is to re-establish ourselves as a top team. We want to make sure we reverse that slide.

Something failed inside the transmission - we won't know exactly until we get the car back and have a look at it. The job for us now is to work on our reliability.

Despite strong winds which lasted for most of the day, we still managed to continue putting mileage on the engine and gearbox. We also completed some tyre testing, as well as brake and general set-up work.

This morning's running was wet and although Mark managed to put more mileage on the FW28 we had to stop mid afternoon with a known gearbox problem. Alex was undertaking some tire testing for Bridgestone in the FW27C and also stopped mid afternoon with a fuel pump failure.

I believe all the teams are looking into it.

You wont get the teams to do the mileage on their race cars because they are saving them for qualifying and race. Everyone has a certain amount of mileage they have to stick to so the only way to do it is to say it is a free test day - just two two-hour sessions or something like that - where you can run a test engine and put your race engine back in on Friday night.