The MERCEDES GP PETRONAS pair of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosbergfinished the morning session in second and fourth places having focused ondeveloping the mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of their MGP W01 cars.

The afternoon session saw further work on set-up and a tyre programme withthe soft and hard compounds in use at Shanghai this weekend. Nico andMichael again finished the session in second and fourth positions havingcompleted 39 and 42 laps respectively over the course of the day.

Drivers       Car No. Chassis No.     Free Practice 1Free Practice 2 Nico Rosberg    4    MGP W01 / 02    17 laps   1:36.748  P222 laps   1:35.465   P2 Michael Schumacher   3    MGP W01 / 03    14 laps   1:37.509  P428 laps   1:35.602   P4 

Weather        Cool and dry Temperatures    Air: 13-17°C    Track: 21-29°C  

NICO ROSBERG "We made good progress on the set-up over the course of the day and triedsome new directions which all seemed to work ok. I did lose a little bit ofbalance with too much oversteer at the end of the afternoon so we need tolook into the reasons for that. The long runs were pretty good on my sideand with the work that Michael completed, we should be in a good position onour tyre evaluations. The pattern looks pretty similar to Malaysia in termsof our pace compared to other teams but we'll have to wait and see how itworks out tomorrow."

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER"Today's practice sessions went better than I had expected. The handling waspretty much ok and it seems that we have made a small step forward. Webrought some improvements here including the new rear wing which havehelped. So I am quite confident for the rest of the weekend even if theoverall ranking will not change much from the first three races. I was a bitunlucky this morning as I had a puncture on my rear left prime tyre so wehad to use one from the afternoon's allocation. That meant I only had threenew tyres in the second session but it worked out fine in the end."

ROSS BRAWN"Generally a positive day and initial evaluations are that we have made someprogress with the car. As we know the two tyres well now, we focused more onthe mechanical and aerodynamic set-up of the car today. We are not quitethere with the balance over the entire lap but Nico and Michael achievedsome respectable lap times. We are improving step-by-step but there is along way to go and we won't be happy until we can consistently compete withthe cars ahead."

NORBERT HAUG"A very busy day today with a lot of learning for us. Our lap times in racetrim did not look too bad in my view and both Nico and Michael have beenreasonably quicker with lesser fuel. Having said that, I am not expectingthat a lot has changed in terms of performance amongst the teams since theMalaysian Grand Prix a fortnight ago. We still have some fine tuning to doin tomorrow's third practice session and I hope we can make a further stepforward from today."