Jerez, Day 4: McLaren test report

Kevin Magnussen returned to the cockpit for his second session in the car – his first full day behind the wheel of MP4-29.

An overnight rain shower meant the morning started cold and wet. The team capitalised on the conditions, electing to run a wet-weather programme that gave Kevin the opportunity to gain experience on both the Intermediate and Full Wet tyres. It also supplied the engineers with data about the behavior of the power unit in the wet.

While the morning rain quickly abated, today’s cooler conditions meant that the track never fully dried, rendering laptimes slower than in previous days. Nonetheless, Kevin racked up an extremely impressive 110 laps, giving both himself and the team further insight into the behaviour of the power unit and chassis across a range of different conditions.

Kevin brought his day to a slightly premature end, getting the car onto a wet kerb at Turn 10, losing traction and oversteering into the wall. However, with the incident occurring just 10 minutes before the end of the day’s running, and with MP4-29 sustaining only relatively minor damage, the impact to the day’s programme was minimal.

What’s next :

We return to MTC having completed 1084 laps of Jerez, and armed with terabytes of data to analyse. This will be pored over ahead of our next test, in Bahrain, between February 19 and 22. The current run-programme has Kevin driving for the opening two days before handing over to Jenson.