Team reaction after day two in Barcelona test

Sauber Ferrari

On the second day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain it was Kamui Kobayashi’s turn to evaluate the new parts the team had put on the Sauber C30-Ferrari in preparation for the start of the season. After the sun broke through, the Japanese driver enjoyed good track conditions and covered more than 100 laps.

James Key: “Today we ran a similar programme to yesterday to allow Kamui to evaluate the new parts on the car and give us his feedback. We ran various set up options to check their effectiveness, and to help us to learn more about future development directions. In the afternoon we also did a little bit of work dedicated to the tyres, and again gained some valuable data. Now we are looking forward to doing race simulations with both drivers – with Sergio tomorrow and Kamui on Friday.”

Kamui Kobayashi: “It was an interesting and productive day for me, and we completed our programme as planned. We achieved a good mileage and learnt a lot. The set up work with the new car is different to last year’s car, and it is good to get more experience with that. In the afternoon the way the track evolved was quite significant, and we struggled a bit with adapting the car and finding the right balance. But this is nothing to worry about.”

Sergio Pérez will be taking over for Thursday. On Friday Kamui will be on duty again.

Toro Rosso Ferrari

The second day of the final pre-season test went well for us here at the Catalunya Circuit. The STR6 ran reliably, which meant Sebastien was able to complete a lot of laps, more than any other driver in fact.

In the morning, the Swiss driver completed a full race simulation which provided useful data in terms of tyre degradation, car performance and reliability. In the afternoon, the focus switched to running with lower fuel loads, while the team spent almost an hour practicing “live” pit stops, a very important exercise given the increased number of pit stops likely during this year’s races.

During the day, Sebastien used Pirelli’s Hard, Soft and Super-soft compounds. Tomorrow, Jaime Alguersuari takes over cockpit duties for the final two days of the test.

Sebastien Buemi: “We can be pleased with what we achieved today, because with 120 laps, it meant we completed all the programme we had planned. Apart from the race simulation, I was also able to do a qualifying simulation. We showed a reasonable performance level and the team did a very good job in preparing the car so well. Overall, it has been a productive test. Now, we must wait and see if we can make even more progress over the next two days with Jaime driving and then we can see where we really are when we get to Melbourne.”

Ferrari

Today, Ferrari started its final test session in preparation for the Formula 1 World Championship, which gets underway on Sunday 27 March in Melbourne, Australia.

Felipe Massa was at the wheel of the 150° Italia today. The team tackled a very full programme today, centred on evaluating updates which have been fitted to the car. Felipe covered a total of 101 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.23.324.

The Scuderia continues testing at this circuit tomorrow, again with Felipe Massa on track.

Force India Mercedes

Paul di Resta continued the Force India F1 Team’s final pre-season test at the Circuit de Catalunya today. The 24-year-old Scot, who makes his F1 debut in Australia, conducted a simulation of a race weekend, beginning with qualifying runs in the morning and moving onto a full race simulation in the afternoon, complete with live pit stops. In total he ran 118 laps, with a best time of 1:24.334.

Paul di Resta: A reasonable day of running for us today and good reliability and clear weather meant we could get through all of our programme. In the morning I worked through the qualifying sims and in the afternoon it was onto the race runs. I’ve done pit stops before in practice last year but trying them in race conditions was a new experience. However they were similar in length to what I’ve experienced in the DTM over the past four years so I think I dealt with them OK. I’ll have a break tomorrow while Adrian takes over the car to test some new aero upgrades we’re running for the first time. I’ll get my chance to run them on Friday and look forward to seeing how much time they will give.

Dominic Harlow, circuit engineering director: Paul was back in the car today, this time for a full day of running. In a productive outing he covered over 500km, running our standard Saturday practice and qualifying programmes before lunch and then moving to a full race simulation in the afternoon. We also had our full race crew here today to give them some live pit stop practice. Reliability was good again, which allowed us to cover our primary objectives for today. Paul takes a break tomorrow and Adrian will be in the car for the full day.

Mercedes GP

The MERCEDES GP PETRONAS team’s final test ahead of the 2011 Formula One season began at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona today with Nico Rosberg at the wheel of the MGP W02.

— The team ran the first items of its upgrade package today including a new exhaust package and new bodywork.
— The morning was spent conducting baseline runs with the new components to ensure they were performing as predicted.
— Results were in line with the team´s expectations.
— The afternoon session focused on set-up and tyre management over longer runs.
— A bodywork problem brought the day’s running to an earlier than planned end.
— Nico completed 100 laps today, equating to 466 kms. The team has now completed 4768 kms of pre-season testing.
— Nico’s quickest time was set on the first lap of what proved to be his final long run of the day.

Michael Schumacher will take over the car for Thursday and Friday, with Nico completing the programme on Saturday.

Nico Rosberg: “It was nice to get the first of our upgrades on the car today, and to feel their potential. Thanks to everyone at the team for their hard work as I think we have some impressive developments, even though we couldn’t test or show the full performance today as not all of the elements are on the car and working together yet. We had glimpses that showed that the full package should be a big step. The bodywork problem cost some time at the end, however we still learned a great deal.”

Lotus Renault GP

Vitaly Petrov remained in the R31 for day two of the Barcelona test as he clocked up 115 laps to demonstrate a clear step forward in terms of the car’s overall reliability.

The team improved its understanding of the forces acting on the tyres by running instrumented wheels this morning. Vitaly got a feel for the car over long runs by simulating a race distance this afternoon, using both the hard and soft compounds of dry tyres.

Vitaly Petrov: “I’m pleased with what we achieved today and I was able to learn a lot about the car and the tyres. We spent the morning doing shorter runs and working on the set-up, and I was pretty happy with the car by the end of the morning. But the most important thing was to complete the race distance, which we managed this afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do consistent long runs and really start understanding the tyres.”

Alan Permane: "A good day for us. We did some data gathering in the morning, followed by set-up work and then a race distance in the afternoon. The focus of the set-up work today was looking at the rear suspension. We made various changes during the morning and found some good directions."

Williams Cosworth

Sam Michael, Technical Director: It has not been a productive day for us after we had a KERS fault first thing this morning. We removed the system and were able to get out for some limited running late afternoon.

Pastor Maldonado: It hasn’t been a good day as we didn’t complete our planned programme. We unfortunately didn’t get enough running in to make too much progress.

Williams will be back on track tomorrow with Rubens Barrichello driving the FW33 for the second day of the test.

Team Lotus

Jarno Trulli: "We’re pretty happy with how the day went - completing 98 laps gave us a chance to work through a number of setup options and we collected a lot of useful data on the tyre degradation. They’re behaving pretty much how we expected them to and the changes we made to the car gave us the results we wanted so we’ll look through all the information we’ve gathered and see if we can take another step forward tomorrow."

Mike Gascoyne: "Today was a very good day for us, much more productive than a couple of the days we have had in testing so far. It is good to complete 98 laps with no real problems on the car. We concentrated on long runs, looking at tyre degradation and setup options, and the pitcrew worked through a number of pitstop practices in advance of the first race so we ran through the entire plan and everyone is happy with the work that has been done today."

Red Bull Renault

After Mark Webber tested Chassis 02 for the first time yesterday, today it was Sebastian
Vettel’s turn to steer the second RB7 through a test programme.

At the end of testing, Sebastian Vettel said: “It was a good day and a good time,
although to be honest, it’s difficult to say where we are, as the lap times of the teams are
all over the place. We’ve done a lot of laps again today, which is good. We have had
no major problems with reliability throughout testing and the speed looks good as far as
we can judge, but I think we have to wait until after Melbourne – maybe in Malaysia or
China – to really see where we are.”

As well as completing a series of long and short runs with the RB7 today, the team also
completed a series of pit stop practices.

“It was good to have the race team here yesterday and today, to go through pit stop
practices,” said Head of Race Engineering Ian Morgan. “Normally, we would do that
once in pre-season testing but, as we lost a little time with the weather at the last test, this
extra test was a good opportunity to get some more practice in ahead of Melbourne.

“As for the rest of today’s programme, it was much the same as yesterday. Seb did 112
laps without any real problems all day, which is gratifying. It’s always difficult though, to
tell what your true position is until you start the season, but our pace looks good at the
moment, which is promising.”

McLaren Mercedes

Lewis took over the wheel for his penultimate day of pre-season testing. His programme largely mirrored Jenson’s day yesterday: he spent the morning running pitstop rehearsals with a full-race crew, which was cut short by a minor hydraulics leak.

The morning’s planned race simulation was also halted due to an exhaust failure just before lunch.

For the afternoon, Lewis and the engineers ran through a number of set-up evaluations, conducted over shorter runs. Lewis declared himself positive with the new components brought to this test, and the team is positive that it can end its preparations with two trouble-free days of running.

Tomorrow is a changeover day for the team, which will not be running at the Circuit de Catalunya. Track testing resumes on Friday, with Jenson once again driving MP4-26.

Virgin Racing Cosworth

Day two of Marussia Virgin Racing’s four-day test at the Circuit de Catalunya saw the team begin its final race preparation programme in readiness for the season-opening Grand Prix in Melbourne in a little over two weeks’ time.

The session began in cool conditions, although the temperatures soon lifted to provide improved track conditions as Jérôme D’Ambrosio worked towards some longer runs in the MVR-02 to begin evaluating the hard tyre compound for the first three races.

Jérôme was making good progress and had completed 42 laps when an electrical problem stopped the MVR-02 out on track late morning, causing some damage to the gearbox internals. This confined the car to the garage until mid-afternoon as the team worked to fix the fault and remedy the damage. A quick turnaround saw the car back on track with sufficient time to notch up a further 22 laps before the afternoon session closed, bringing the day’s tally to 64 laps.

The team hopes for a more productive fault-free day tomorrow to continue to put the Pirelli PZero tyres through their paces over some increasingly longer runs, working towards a race distance.

Jérôme D’Ambrosio: “Today has been a little frustrating as we lost valuable track time. The mechanics worked very hard to get me back out on track as quickly as possible, so with the laps that we did complete we have at least been able to gather some useful information. We still have a lot of work to do so we look forward to a trouble-free day tomorrow so we can start to move things on a little with our tyre evaluation programme.”

John Booth, Team Principal: “It was disappointing to lose track time on a day when we really wanted to start getting stuck into our race preparation work, but on the positive side we did well to recover and again demonstrated our ability to turn the car around quickly when faced with an issue. Touch wood, our reliability has been relatively good so far, so it’s quite pleasing that we got to the bottom of the problem so quickly and applied a good solution. We also worked through some suspension geometry changes in order to try to optimise the performance of the tyres with race stints in mind. We hope to have a clear run at the programme tomorrow in order to continue the good work we have started.”