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Belgian
Grand Prix — free practice
September 9,
2005
Jordan Grand Prix
drivers, Tiago Monteiro, Narain Karthikeyan and Nicolas
Kiesa began the weekend with a smooth-running first
Free Practice this morning at the challenging and legendary
6.976-km circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. All three drivers
had the advantage of driving on a familiar track and
started their various programmes such as Bridgestone
tyre evaluation and finding a right chassis car balance
to cope with Spa’s high-speed corners. Unfortunately
tricky track conditions and heavy rain prevented them
from completing any lap in the afternoon. The team is
now hoping that the weather will improve for the rest
of the weekend and look forward to making further progress
for what should be an exciting and possibly unpredictable
race on Sunday.
Free practice 1
| Narain Karthikeyan (EJ15B/02) |
15th |
1:53.148 |
09 laps |
| Nicolas Kiesa (EJ15/04) |
18th |
1:54.437 |
17 laps |
| Tiago Monteiro (EJ15B/03) |
20th |
1:55.174 |
07 laps |
Free practice
2
| Tiago Monteiro
(EJ15B/03) |
no time |
| Narain Karthikeyan
(EJ15B/02) |
no time |
| Nicolas Kiesa
(EJ15/04) |
no time |
Team quotes
on the Belgian Grand Prix Friday free practice sessions
Narain Karthikeyan
“This morning I was running the EJ15B car for the
first time during a Grand Prix weekend and it was problem
free. I did a good job but the circuit conditions were
constantly changing. I cannot say much about the afternoon,
except that a boat would have been better than an F1
car.”
Tiago Monteiro
“It is quite difficult to describe how the car
was feeling considering the small number of laps we
have completed today. This morning we just checked if
the car was ok and wanted to do our complete normal
Friday programme but the track conditions did not allow
us to do this. The tyre choice for the rest of the weekend
will therefore not be an easy one. However, I am pretty
confident we will make a good choice.”
Nicolas Kiesa
“It was quite difficult this morning as I was one
of the first to go out in half dry, half wet conditions
and also because I have not driven here for three years.
I had therefore to get used to the circuit and its difficult
conditions. But all in all, we had a pretty good practice
and I have to say that from the start, the car felt
very good. The best thing about the car was even though
the circuit was getting dryer and dryer, its behaviour
did not change. It was very nice and I felt confident
to push it harder. We have managed to test some tyres
and we have a half-decent evaluation. If I was a race
driver, I would have a 85% idea of which tyres we should
use and this despite the fact we did not run in the
second practice.”
Sporting director: Adrian Burgess
“Everything went ok this morning but we could
not do a lot of work because of the weather conditions.
We did our tyre blanket comparison this afternoon and
all the tyre blankets worked perfectly well. We will
wait until tomorrow to see what the weather brings.”
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