Bahrain I, Day 2: Red Bull Racing test report

Sebastian Vettel posted a total of 59 laps of the Bahrain International Circuit on the second day of testing in the Gulf state, as Infiniti Red Bull Racing made progress towards solving the reliability issues that have so far hampered the team’s pre-season preparations.

Afterwards, the defending champion said his latest spell at the wheel of the RB10 had ended on a positive note.

“Definitely a better day today,” he said. “We did more laps, so that’s encouraging. It’s good to check the car, check the reliability, but obviously there is a lot still to do. It was good to get a proper first feel for the car and it feels OK but there’s a lot more to come. It’s difficult to talk about catching up [to rivals] because I don’t know what other people are doing, but we did more laps than we have done so far and that’s the big thing. We’re learning every single lap, even if the quality of the lap is sometimes not the best. However, the most important thing is to run and we did that. The last two days have been very useful. I hope Daniel can get some more good laps in tomorrow.”

Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum added: “We had a good day. We did a tremendous amount of work overnight and the guys really pulled it together: so much so that we were ahead of schedule with the car this morning. We were able to fix the problem we had yesterday very quickly and there were no lingering issues, so we managed some good running today. Every lap you turn gives you a huge amount of data and that’s gold dust, so we’re pleased with what we got done today. We’re not out of the woods yet and we still have a lot of work to do but the direction we’ve taken is looking like the right one. After a successful morning we tried some new elements late in the day, which we had been waiting for. Sebastian felt those were a big step forward, so overall a very encouraging session. The times of course are irrelevant, as we’re solely focused on reliability at the moment, and in that respect we feel we are making good progress.”