By Andrew Cutler
July 7 2012

It was a very wet Friday, and the folks in the Toro Rosso stable believe that Saturday and Sunday will bring more of the same. Thus the 'name of the game' for the Practice Sessions was to gather info on the STR7's wet weather handling while not using up too many of the full wet spec tires.

Daniel Ricciardo would only log 10 laps in FP1, posting the 2nd best time with a 1:56.827. For FP2, he would do no more than to make two quick 'out & back in' circuts on intermediate tires to see how they responded to the conditions.

Jean-Eric Vergne would notch a total of 19 laps; 12 in FP1 with a best of 1:59.076 (10th fastest) and 7 in FP2 with a best of 1:59.854 (14th fastest).

Here are the teams' post-Friday comments:

Daniel Ricciardo:

 "It looks as though the rain is going to continue for much of the weekend, so today’s running was valuable, even if this afternoon, it was too wet to do many laps. The morning session went quite well, running only on the Extreme tyre and that gave me the confidence in the car in these conditions to feel good about tomorrow. We also did a little bit of set-up work but we did not change much, because, in these conditions most of the time comes from yourself. In the afternoon, we did fit Intermediates, but only for a couple of "in" and "out" laps. The rain definitely evens out the performance gaps between the cars, so I’d be happy to have the rest of the weekend run in the wet."

Jean-Eric Vergne:

"Today’s practice was useful for us to get used to the very wet conditions and what direction we should be going in with the car in terms of set-up for what looks like being a very wet weekend. The times mean nothing, because the conditions were changing a lot and on my final run, the rain intensified. We had wanted to do more on the Intermediates, but the track surface was never dry enough to use them. There was not much we could in terms of improving the car, although we did make some set up changes over the course of the two sessions, even if it is hard to evaluate as the water level on the circuit was always different. The rain certainly makes the performance more even through the field, so I am expecting to have a more competitive time than in recent races."

Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer:

"We are facing a completely wet race weekend, so today it was important to get a feel for the car in these conditions. There was also a strategic element to take into account, as we were obviously thinking of saving the Extreme rain tyres in case they are required for qualifying and the race, because each driver is only allocated three sets of these per weekend. Therefore it’s a trade off between doing some proper work on the car and saving the tyres. Whatever happens, the next two days should be a great show for the fans who have packed the grandstands despite the bad weather, as we have seen how hard it is to keep the cars on track at this high speed circuit and in these conditions. We only had a few laps to get a picture of how the car is performing and what to do to make it faster. We ran most of the day with the Extreme tyre on both cars and all we did with the Intermediates was a couple of launches."