F. Schumacher Track Quotations

Any track you're good at, for whatever reason, you look forward to coming back, ... I don't know why we've been so strong here, but if you're going to pick a place to be good, this isn't a bad one.

Its a big day tomorrow, ... Doug runs Bernstein. Thats exciting to watch. (Fans are asking me what its like to be in a points battle) and I say, you know what? Its exciting. Its exciting to be in it. Just because I drive a race car doesnt mean Im not a race fan. As soon as Im done, Im watching them. Its not just that were in a points battle, but Bernstein and Kalitta? Thats a stout race. Bernstein just hauled butt down the track and Kalitta just smoked the tires. You can be sure its going to have their stomachs turning.

You could see when the drivers that went out were on track that they couldn't really drive.

As usual, it is difficult to know after today's practice what the true situation is and we will find that out after studying the data in terms of qualifying and the race. On the plus side we made progress from the morning to the afternoon. As usual here, the bumpy and slippery nature of the track makes the car quite uncomfortable to drive and it can feel unbalanced and twitchy. But I get the feeling we might be in slightly better shape than we have been recently.

Like everyone we expected the track to dry out a lot faster than it did. Instead the track was incredibly slow to dry out. It was amazing how slippery the circuit was, and I can't remember seeing a race like that. We came straight back in and that enabled us to score some points. The team did a great job but we just got one decision wrong.

I am not happy with my lap this afternoon. It started well, but towards the middle section I began to lose grip and I think this was because the tyre pressures went up higher than we wanted, causing me to slide around. But, looking at the data, it seems it was not just down to the pressures, so the track must have been more slippery than in the morning, which can be seen from looking at the other drivers' times. When I saw my lap time, I expected to be much further back on the grid, so this is not such a bad result at the end of the day.