Red Bull duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber were pleased with how competitive Red Bull was in free practice in Valencia considering their low expectations for the Spanish track. But the team has yet to decide whether it will keep its F-duct – which it tried again in practice – on for the rest of the weekend.
Valencia was thought likely to suit McLaren in particular better than Red Bull, but Vettel and Webber ended Friday in second and third places, just behind pacesetter Fernando Alonso's Ferrari.
"Overall, a good day – we did a lot of laps, we didn't have any problem with the car, so we could follow our program like it should be on a Friday," said Vettel. "We need to see if we keep the F-duct in the car, we need to confirm that, but all in all I think the pace was promising today considering this shouldn't be our strongest track. We did a step forward with the whole car – it was a good day for us."
Webber agreed that it had been a promising start.
"We had a good Friday program with no interruptions and evaluated the tires and the F-duct, which we will look into tonight, as we all know it's not without its challenges getting that thing working," he said. "The track changed a lot this afternoon, the conditions were moving around a bit. But a very productive day for us: the car ran faultlessly and was pretty comfortable so looking forward to tomorrow."