Bahrain II, Day 3: Marussia test report

15 days before the 2014 season-opener in Melbourne, Jules Bianchi has now completed his allocated running with the Marussia F1 Team’s MR03. On Day 3 of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, he completed 78 laps and added a further 422 kms to the MR03’s pre-season mileage tally.

This morning the Team got off to an excellent start, with Jules posting 55 laps during a series of trouble-free longer runs. Progress was a little more frustrated in the early part of the afternoon, but the Team was back in its stride later in the day, working steadily towards performance evaluations on the Soft and Supersoft tyres.

On Sunday Max Chilton will return to the cockpit of the MR03 for the fourth and final day of running.

Jules Bianchi

“It is quite exciting to end today in a positive way and to know that the next time I drive the car will be on Friday in Melbourne at the first Grand Prix of the season. We have achieved a good baseline understanding of the car now and I have a really good feeling for it. Of course we had hoped for even more mileage today, but we are happy with what we achieved and the work we have done is very important. At the end of the day I got my first experience of the car in lower fuel on the Soft and Supersoft tyres, getting closer to qualifying specification. I was encouraged by the performance of the car, even at this early stage when we know there is more to come. We will see how things go for the Team tomorrow but I feel that we are well-prepared and gaining confidence with our package.”

John Booth, Team Principal

“Once again, it is very pleasing to end the day having achieved a substantial amount of mileage and much of our planned programme. The majority of the morning was spent working on longer runs during which we were able to evaluate systems on the car to cover the basics needed to go racing, for example brake wear and temperatures, fuel system performance and cooling temperatures. This afternoon our attentions were focused on set-up testing early on, followed by some lower fuel performance tests with the Soft and Supersoft tyres, which enabled us to get more of a feeling of the car’s potential. With much of the field doing the same, we were pleased to end the day in P7 on the timesheet, but we remain on the cautious side of optimistic as there is still a long way for everyone to go. There is further work to be done in terms of managing the performance of the powertrain system and hopefully we can make some more progress with this tomorrow. All in all, a good day.”