Jerez, Day 1: Raikkonen sets the pace

The Formula 1 2012 Season officially started today as 4 days pre-season winter testing kicked off at the Jerez Race Circuit in Spain.

Things got to a start early in the morning, with Williams F1 Team launching their 2012 challenger, the FW34, at precisely 8:30am (CET). As the launch ceremony was going on in the pit lane, individual team garages were already full of activity as teams prepared their cars to take to the track for the first time of 2012.

In all, eleven of the total twelve teams are attending the first test in Jerez, with the exception of Marussia, who are delaying their attendance at winter tests to focus on their 2012 challenger, which is yet to be launched. Additionally, HRT F1 and Mercedes AMG F1 are using their 2011 challengers to run a series of tests on car parts while they focus on perfecting their 2012 cars – HRT will only take part in Tuesday and Wednesday’s session, while Mercedes AMG F1 will only run a three day programme, leaving on Thursday evening. The remaining nine constructors are all running a full 4 day programme.

The morning session was dominated by Kimi Raikkonen in his first Winter Testing programme since 2009. Driving his new Lotus E20, the ‘Iceman’ completed a massive 50 laps, in line with the teams morning programme of simply putting miles on the new car, and letting Raikkonen get used to the Pirelli tyres. By the end of the first session, 13:00 CET, Raikkonen topped the timesheets posting a 1:19.670.

Paul di Resta clocked the second fastest time after his VJM05 spent most of the morning being examined and tweaked by the Sahara Force India team, followed in third by Nico Rosberg in his 2011 Mercedes W02, which carried some minor modifications.

With an impressive start to his full time Formula 1 drive, Daniel Ricciardo drove his new STR7 a full 40 laps without any problem and slotted into 4th place by the end of the morning session. However, it was reported from the team that they are having minor issues with their exhaust system, in that it passes over, and causes, the rear wishbones on the car to overheat. Although nothing drastic for the time being, it is believed that Red Bull Racing’s RB8 runs a similarly designed exhaust and will be interesting to see how the Red Bull engineers cope with what could become a worrying issue.

Mark Webber was able to drive the new RB8 into fifth position having completed only 8 laps in the session. The rare few number of laps completed by the team in the morning was apparently due to the fact that a parts plane that would equip the car was diverted to Seville on route thanks to fog in other parts of Spain.

Kobayashi (Sauber-Ferrari), Jenson Button (McLaren-Mercedes) and Felipe Massa (Ferrari) completed the [somewhat surprising] ‘mid-field’ runners of the session, with Kovalainen’s Caterham, Pastor Maldonado’s newly launched Williams and de la Rosa’s 2011 HRT bringing up the rear, posting 9th, 10th and 11th times retrospectively.

The afternoon session got off to a slow start as the teams enjoyed their lunch breaks and post-morning session analysis. One of the changes for the afternoon session to be noted was that seven times Formula 1 World Champion Michael Schumacher would be driving the Mercedes W02 in place of Nico Rosberg, who were sharing the duties today.

Again though, it was Kimi Raikkonen first out for the afternoon in his Lotus E20 to get even more laps into the day; however, he only put in a few more laps over the course of the afternoon as Lotus F1 looked to spend a lot of time analysing the new features of the car. However, this did not stop him from ending Day 1’s testing at the top of the timesheets, totalling 75 laps in total over the day and posting a fastest lap of 1:19.670.

Second and third places remained unchanged for the afternoon - Di Resta in his Sahara Force India managed 101 laps today with a fastest lap of 1:19.772 and Nico Rosberg finished with a 1:20.219.

Mark Webber, after a slow start to the day, managed 46 laps in the afternoon and moved himself up to fourth at the end of day 1, 0.826 seconds off the pace of Raikkonen.

Daniel Ricciardo’s impressed in the STR7, getting up to 5th place overall before his car came to a stop on turn 1 on his 57th lap. The session saw its first red flag to allow for the car to be cleared, and Toro Rosso later cited that they had to stop the car as it was “disintegrating” on track, which actually meant the car suffered a drop in oil pressure and the engine management system closed the car down. Although nothing serious, the team would be unable to restart the car for the end of the session.

The seven times World Champion Michael Schumacher, although posting 42 laps, had a relatively quiet and unnoticed afternoon, posting an average 6th position with a time of 1:20794.

Kobayashi and his team Sauber F1 had an impressive afternoon session in the Sauber C31; completing a 23-lap stint at one point mid-afternoon and putting a chart topping total of 106 laps on the car on its first day of full running and running seventh. Things did come to a disappointing end for the team though when Kobayashi had to stop on track with just 25 minutes of the session left, bringing a second red flag to the session.

Jenson Button in his MP4-27 and Felipe Massa in the F2012 again had mediocre afternoons only managing eighth and ninth places retrospectively, with once again Kovalainen, Maldonado and De la Rose bringing up the final back positions, although Kovalainen’s day came to an early end when Caterham F1 reported that his CT01’s starter shaft had broken, meaning the car could not be started.

Winter Testing Day 1 was an interesting day with, what the teams will be glad of, relatively little ‘action’ or major breakdowns. Williams F1 Team will surely be looking to run their car a little longer today, as only 24 laps meant they ran their car the least of all teams today, and Toro Rosso wil be pleased to get their car running again after a very successful first morning session. All teams will also be looking to clock as many laps / miles as possible as drivers continue to get used to the new regulations and feel of the cars.

All running times from today’s AM and PM sessions can be found below.
Day 2 starts tomorrow (February 8th 2012) at 09:00 CET.

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PM times:

AM times (stopped at 13.00CET)