Sebastian Vettel set the pace on the first day of the second official winter test, which takes place this week in Barcelona. The German lapped the circuit in 1m23.265s, completing a total of 79 laps.
“It’s clear that the cars have less grip than last year, but we try to come back from that slowly,” said the World Champion. “It’s difficult to judge where we are compared with the others right now. It’s all based on feeling and the feeling I have inside the car at the moment is fine. I think we had a good day today, with no trouble. We had a long lunch break when we made some changes, but not because anything broke down. All in all, it was a good day.”
The team will now start doing race simulations and with the whole race team present the focus is on getting things sorted out so that the crew is ready for the first race meeting.
Vettel’s time was nearly two-tenths of a second ahead of the Force India of Nico Hülkenberg, who did 97 laps.
“I’m pleased with how things went today,” Hulkenberg said. “It was only my second day in the car and I’m still bedding in and getting used to things, but after each run I felt a bit more comfortable. We started with some aero runs and more data gathering this morning, and then moved to longer runs in the afternoon. The car feels consistent and the drivability is good.”
The Force India was was just a tenth ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the new McLaren. The British driver did 114 laps in the course of the day. It began with data collection, including aero work on newer rubber before his engineers began a more comprehensive programme of tyre and set-up evaluation. The focus in the afternoon turned to longer run.
“With more than 500km under our belt, this was an extremely productive day,” said team manager David Redding. “The car ran reliably and without problem all day and Lewis was happy with the car. Given the cooler temperatures we experienced today, we’re optimistic that we’re headed in the right direction with our tyre and set-up work for the start of the season.”
Hamilton’s time was just faster than the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo, who completed 76 laps. The team worked on evaluating several set-up configurations with various fuel loads. The day was cut short with a technical problem that stopped the car out on track and with only one hour of the day remaining.
There was then a gap back to Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, which clocked a 1m24.100s in the course of 75 laps. The team said that the Spaniard was continuing with “the tasks of development and data acquisition relating to the behaviour of the new car”. This was a tenth faster than Michael Schumacher in the new Mercedes, which completed just 51 laps.
“My initial feelings with our new car are certainly good,” said Schumacher. “I’m happy with the different evaluations that we have done over the last week, but obviously with the rule changes, we won’t know more until later. It’s certainly an improvement and we have worked hard on the areas we had defined last year. The aerodynamics figures look good so I’m not worried about the shape of the nose! Even though we had the hydraulic problem today, I’m pleased with all the mileage we have achieved so far with the new car.”
Seventh fastest was Sauber’s Sergio Perez, who did only 66 laps and set a best of 1m24.219s. The team was rather vague about the problems in the morning, but had a broken rear anti-roll bar in the afternoon
There was then a big gap back to Bruno Senna, who did 97 laps but recorded only a 1m25.711s. The team said that it was “working successfully through a detailed aero correlation test programme in the morning before moving on to car set-up optimisation”. Valtteri Bottas takes over tomorrow.
Senna’s time was three-tenths ahead of Heikki Kovalainen’s Caterham, which had a troubled time and did just 31 laps,
“That obviously wasn’t how we wanted day one here to go, but that’s what testing is for – pushing everything to the limit to make sure we get rid of the problems before we get to the first race,” said The Finn. “It’s hard to learn a lot from limited laps, but I’m back in the car on Friday and I’m sure we’ll be able to push on with the program between now and then and make sure we get as much as we can out of the next three days on track.”
The problem was a rear track rod failure.
Lotus F1 Team had a bad day with Romain Grosjean stopping after just seven laps in a brand new chassis. The team concluded that there was a serious problem and the cra was sent back to the UK. The original E20 will now be flown out to Jerez for the test tomorrow.
“We completed a few aero runs and then started timed runs, but I was very quickly aware that the car wasn’t responding as it should,” said Grosjean. “It’s not ideal to lose track time, but fortunately we will have the chassis which ran perfectly in Jerez so I should get some good track time tomorrow.
Charles Pic rounded off the runners with 121 laps in the 2011 Marussia Virgin, setting a best lap of 1m28.026s, but getting plenty of mileage under his belt.
Do you feel that maybe Force India are running a glory test, as they need sponsorship, given the current deep financial troubles of Mr Mallya’s business interest?
As a comparison, Lewis Hamilton’s fastest race lap in Barcelona in 2011 was 1:26.727 and Webber’s pole time was 1:20.981.
Admittedly this doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.
But then if we look back to Perez’s 1m24.219 compared to his 2011 Q1 time of 1:24.209…
I might be reading too much into this, but does it strike anyone else as odd that one of Williams’ race drivers is carrying out “a detailed aero correlation test programme in the morning before moving on to car set-up optimisation”, while the test and reserve driver does a full day’s resting on the following day?
Wouldn’t it normally be the job of the third driver to do the aero and set up tests?