Ferrari has reduced the size of its Formula One team, but managed to avoid making staff redundant, boss Stefano Domenicali has revealed.

The Italian told Salzburger Nachrichten, an Austrian newspaper, that new rules in the sport made it necessary to trim the size of the workforce of the reigning constructors' championship team.

"Our team is smaller but (achieved this) without layoffs," Domenicali said. "About 100 employees have been otherwise employed within Ferrari, so our (team) count is now about 700. "

Timo Glock had good speed at Sepang on Saturday, and with Sebastian Vettel and Rubens Barrichello's grid penalties, the German moves his Toyota up to third on the grid for the Malaysian Grand Prix. But he was way too fast in the pitlane in practice, caught by the FIA doing nearly 80kmh in the 60kmh zone. The infraction costs him 4000 Euros.

Nick Heidfeld went 3.7kmh over the limit in the same practice session, attracting an 800 euro fine.

E.A, Source: GMM
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Bridgestone’s soft tyre allowed Jenson Button to set an exciting pole lap of 1:35.181s at Sepang for the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Brawn Mercedes driver took pole by just over nine hundredths from Toyota’s Jarno Trulli.

Track conditions were improved from Friday, with more rubber down, but teams and drivers still struggled to find the best compromises with the new cars and Bridgestone’s slick tyres.

Hirohide Hamashima, Tyre Development Director
“Today showed us that the cars are very close to each other on lap times. For example, in FP3 the top thirteen cars were covered by a second. In terms of tyre performance, the soft tyre has an advantage of about around 1.0–1.3 seconds over its best lap. The soft is able to deliver its best lap time generally on its first flying lap and the performance drop-off does not appear to be as extreme as we saw with the super soft tyre in Australia. The hard gives its best lap time after around 3-4 laps and we have seen very durable performance from it, so it should be the better race tyre.”

“Sepang is an interesting circuit as the track surface improves a lot over the course of the race weekend. This is because the high temperatures mean that the rubber laid melts into the track surface allowing very good surface from a grip point of view. Race strategy should be interesting here, as the difference between the tyres in terms of performance drop-off is not as great as in Australia, so there could be more strategy options.”

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