Heidfeld working hard as the rain comes into action

By BMW Sauber F1
July 10 2009

As was the case in the morning session, in the second free practice for the German Grand Prix the BMW Sauber F1 Team faced unusually cold conditions for a summer GP, with temperatures barely exceeding the 10-degree-Celsius mark.

Furthermore, a rain shower shortly after the start of the session made for limited on-track action at the Nürburgring, where Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld still succeeded in completing a comprehensive testing programme without experiencing any technical problems.

 On super-soft tyres Nick recorded his personal best time during his third outing, completing a 1:33.012-minute lap which earned him 11th place in the final standings. In the last sector of this lap, the local hero lost some time behind Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari). With 36 laps under his belt, Nick was the busiest driver of the session and among the very few drivers who went out on Intermediates during the early rain shower.

Robert completed 28 laps of the 5.148-kilometre track, posting a personal best time of 1:33.161 minutes. The Pole finished 14th on the timesheets. Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) posted the fastest lap of the day in 1:32.149 minutes. Thus the defending champion was 0.863 seconds faster than Nick.

During the second free practice session with the modified F1.09, the BMW Sauber F1 Team acquired valuable data regarding the effect of the new components. Together with the drivers, the engineers are now analysing this data in order to perfectly set up the cars for tomorrow's third practice session at 11:00hrs local time (10:00hrs BST) and the all-important qualifying session at 14:00hrs (13:00hrs BST).