Jerez, Day 1: Red Bull test report

As widely expected, Formula One’s first day of pre-season testing got off to a slow and cautious start as teams opted to work their way gingerly into proceedings with all-new and radically different 2014 cars.

That was certainly the case at Infiniti Red Bull Racing, as after the early-morning launch of the RB10 the team kept the car in the garage for most of the day, correcting a technical issue discovered overnight. The new challenger eventually made it on track 15 minutes before the session ended however, with Sebastian Vettel completing an installation lap and two more runs past the pits.

“We did a total of three laps today so it was difficult to get an impression of what the new car is like,” said Sebastian. “We weren’t quite ready this morning and things took a little bit longer than expected. But considering the total amount of running we saw today I think everybody is in a similar position. The laps we did were just to run the car and get everything up to temperature, but it was impossible to get a feeling for it today. There’s still a lot we can go through tonight. Even if you don’t do much running there’s plenty of work.”

Of the first day of testing Race Engineering Co-ordinator Andy Damerum said: “The packaging of these new cars is obviously vastly different to what we’ve had in the past, so working on them is a learning curve and we spent most of today correcting a problem we discovered overnight. We eventually got it sorted in time to get out on track and we put in a handful of laps, with Seb doing his installation lap on inters because of a brief shower beforehand. While that might not sound the most successful outing, even those few laps have given us a wealth of data to have a look at, so it’s been a valuable, if tricky, day. I think it’s been a similar story up and down the pit lane. It’s a voyage of discovery for everyone and it will take time to get up to speed with the cars. Seb will be back in the car tomorrow. It’s forecast to rain, though that won’t affect what we’re looking to get done.”