As testing got underway at Barcelona today, Renault's Fernando Alonso continued where he left off at Jerez last week.
On the first day of the penultimate test before the 2005 season gets underway, the Spaniard was in scintillating form, completing the most laps (110) and outpacing the nearest opposition by 0.236s.
The F1 teams were last here in January, at which time several drivers complained of the large number of bumps that had appeared following the tracks resurfacing over the winter break. Today there were few complaints, and the pace increased dramatically, though Alonso's best time was still 1.194s off last year's best of 1:13.797, posted by Takuma Sato. Alonso was joined by Giancarlo Fisichella, who completed 63 laps on his way to posting a best time 0.657s off his teammate's pace.
Attention once again turned to accumulating mileage with the new package: in spite of numerous red flags, and some small delays for Fisichella during the morning, both drivers completed a good day's work and were satisfied with the car's baseline performance.
"This morning's cold conditions meant we focused our programmes around doing plenty of laps with both drivers, and we achieved this, particularly on Fernando's car," said Christian Silk. "The new track surface at this circuit is constantly picking up grip, so the faster drivers were inevitably on track later in the day, but we hope to see conditions stabilise later in the week. Overall, we had a very positive first day here: this is the R25's first visit to Barcelona, and the drivers were happy with stability in the high-speed corners as well as the low-speed balance. Tomorrow, we will concentrate on concluding tyre selection for Melbourne, and continuing our work for Malaysia."
It was a day of mixed fortunes for McLaren. Juan Pablo Montoya finished second quickest, while Kimi Raikkonen crashed heavily at Turn 11 during a race simulation. The badly shaken Finn was taken back to the pits where he was checked over by a doctor. As the team looked over the wreckage of the car, Raikkonen gave the engineers his version of events. Witnesses say that the car suddenly jerked out of shape under braking for the corner, sending it crashing into the barriers.
In recent weeks the Woking team has had a number of problems, indeed Raikkonen was forced to sit out his first day of testing last week at Jerez as the team waited on spare parts to be flown out from the UK.
According to the team; "The initial view is that a foreign body got jammed between the brake caliper and the inside of a wheel rim and machined a groove into the rim which caused an immediate failure. It was a heavy impact but Kimi has been checked and apart from a bruised thumb he is OK. However as a precaution he will not be testing tomorrow."
"I don't really know what happened," the Finn told his team's website. "It was quite a big impact and I'm a bit shaken up and have hurt my thumb. I'm not going to be testing tomorrow but hopefully Pedro will be able to complete the programme with the repaired car."
"I'm pleased that Kimi is OK as it was quite a big impact," added Juan Pablo. "We completed most of the programme today. I had a small problem with a dragging clutch in the morning which hindered my running a bit, but at the end of the day that is what testing is all about - find the problems and solve them. We will continue the programme tomorrow and take it from there."
The team is aiming to repair Kimi's MP4-20 for tomorrow, so that Pedro de la Rosa can test alongside Juan Pablo.
It was mixed fortunes for Toyota also. Ricardo Zonta was third quickest while teammate Jarno Trulli was ninth. Unfortunately, while the Brazilian was in a TF104B, the Italian was at the wheel of the, much-hyped, heavily revised, TF105, which has been described by technical director Mike Gascoyne as a "big step forward". Although it's unclear what strategy the two drivers were on, a deficit of 1.2s doesn't appear to be the "big step forward" that had been hoped for.
David Coulthard continues to show the good form demonstrated in previous tests, the Scot finishing sixth quickest in the Red Bull. Vitantonio Liuzzi was also on duty for the Austrian team, and finished seventh quickest overall, albeit 0.430s off his teammate's pace.
WilliamsF1 is sure to be disappointed with Mark Webber and Antonio Pizzonia finishing eighth and eleventh, both over 1.5s off the pace.
"Since this was Antonio's first outing in the new car, he spent the day getting used to his surroundings and concentrating on set-up work," said test team manager, Tim Newton. "Mark, meanwhile, also focussed on set-up options as well as completing some tyre testing. Mark will be joined by Nick tomorrow."
