Formula One returned to the Nurburgring after a one year break, on a day when the weather was certainly not summery, with even a few rain showers. The two Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro drivers completed just over 100 laps (Felipe 54, Kimi 52,) working mainly on preparation for Sunday’s race and on the comparison of the two types of tyre brought here by Bridgestone.

“The situation is reasonably similar to that at the last race,” commented Stefano Domenicali. “Tomorrow, our aim is to get both cars into Q3 and then try for a good result on Sunday. We know that won’t be at all easy, but, as always we will do all we can to succeed.”

Felipe Massa finished the opening session in a positive third place overall, however at the end of the second ninety minute session, the Brazilian had dropped back to twelfth after running on high fuel loads.

“It was a reasonable day, which confirmed our expectations,” he said. “We still have a bit of work to do, especially in finding the right balance for the first timed lap: with these temperatures, the fronts struggle at the start before improving lap by lap. In the afternoon, we had a heavy fuel load, so as to be as well prepared as possible for Sunday’s race, so we’re not particularly bothered about our position in the classification.”

Similarly, teammate Kimi Raikkonen finished sixth in session one and sixteenth in session two...

“I think we are more or less where we were at Silverstone. We are still struggling a bit to find the best balance on the car, but I am sure that we will find a way of fixing that. In the second session, I only used the softer tyres because we had to work on the car in between the two sessions, which cost me a bit of time. We certainly struggled to get the harder tyre up to the right operating temperature, as was to be expected given the weather.”