Brawn GP News

Brawn GP began the team’s on-track preparations for Round nine of the 2009 championship, the German Grand Prix, at the Nürburgring circuit located in Germany’s Eifel Mountains today. With air temperatures dropping as low as just 10 degrees and a strengthening wind in the afternoon, it was an unseasonably chilly first day of practice.

Light rain just after the start of the morning practice session kept most of the cars in their garages for the first forty minutes. Once out on track, Jenson and Rubens began their initial set-up evaluations, using only the harder of the two tyre compounds provided by Bridgestone for the German Grand Prix weekend, completing 18 laps and 17 laps respectively.

The afternoon session proved equally overcast with a short rain shower ensuring a quiet opening half hour before the team’s programme got fully underway. Both drivers focused on an evaluation of the super soft option and the medium prime tyre, in addition to developing the set-up of the car and combating the lack of front end grip suffered in the first session. Jenson completed 32 laps, finishing the day in third position on the timesheets, with Rubens completing 26 laps and in seventh place.

RESULTS

Drivers Car No. Chassis No. Free Practice 1 Free Practice 2
Jenson Button 22 BGP 001-02 18 laps 01:33.463 P2 32 laps 01:32.369 P3
Rubens Barrichello 23 BGP 001-01 17 laps 01:34.227 P12 26 laps 01:32.664 P7

Weather Cold and windy with occasional rain showers
Temperatures Air: 10-13°C Track: 14-24°C

JENSON BUTTON
“We had a reasonable day and were able to make good progress on the set-up of the car. We are still lacking in a few areas that we need to look at overnight and make improvements but overall today was a pretty good start to the weekend. The main problem is the cold conditions. The air temperature is almost what you would expect in winter testing and the low track temperatures are causing problems with the harder prime tyre so we will struggle with that tyre if it stays like this.”

RUBENS BARRICHELLO
“It looks like this will be another cold race weekend but the car and tyres have a different feeling here from the last race at Silverstone. The harder tyre is really quite tricky and it was difficult to maintain its working range today. However the softer option tyre performed a lot better which is encouraging. We’ve made some improvements this afternoon but still have some way to go on the set-up, particularly with the front end of the car where we were lacking grip all day.”

ROSS BRAWN
“We made some useful progress today using our experience at previous events where the cold and damp conditions have proved more difficult for us. We do still have several areas of the car’s performance to develop overnight to ensure that we have the best package for the rest of the weekend. The weather forecast suggests that conditions may be a little more favourable tomorrow, which combined with some work on the set-up overnight, should put us in a good position for qualifying.”

Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello began Brawn GP’s on-track preparations for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone today.

With both cars affected by the strong breezes around the circuit, the afternoon session provided more valuable data as the drivers worked through a series of aerodynamic and set-up evaluations with the latest upgrades for the BGP 001 car.

A busy programme saw Rubens completing 55 laps over the course of the day with Jenson completing 48 laps.

RESULTS

Drivers Car No. Chassis No. Free Practice 1 Free Practice 2
Rubens Barrichello 23 BGP 001-01 29 laps 01:20.242 P4 26 laps 01:20.244 P6
Jenson Button 22 BGP 001-02 20 laps 01:20.227 P3 28 laps 01:20.767 P14

Weather Cool and breezy
Temperatures Air: 14-17°C Track: 19-34°C

RUBENS BARRICHELLO
“We had a reasonable day and made some good progress on the balance particularly in the second session. There is a lot of work ahead for us tonight however and the pace of our closest competitors was impressive which we need to have a look at. We will have to see what tomorrow will bring but hopefully the track will come towards us and we can have a good day.”

JENSON BUTTON
“We tried a few different evaluations with the aero today and initially struggled as I had no grip in either the high or low speed corners. The wind also really affected the car’s performance today. We made improvements towards the end of the afternoon session so we have some good information to look at tonight to try and make further progress before qualifying.”

ROSS BRAWN
“The track evolution this morning and the strong winds have combined to make the cars quite difficult to work with today and it has been something of a challenge to achieve our planned programme. However this afternoon’s session was more productive with both Jenson and Rubens giving similar feedback on the characteristics of their cars. We will go through all the information carefully this evening but the data gathered this afternoon should give us the right direction on the set-up and aero configuration required for qualifying tomorrow.”