29/01/2005
NEWS STORY
Following Monday's unveiling on its 2005 car, the MP4-20, at Barcelona on Monday, the Woking outfit has kept a very low profile ever since.
The odd press release has been given out, but no times have been issued, until today, when the silver and black cars had company, in the form of Ferrari and Sauber.
Interestingly, the car that Ferrari intends using in the first four races of the season, the F2004 M, driven by Michael Schumacher, posted a best time 0.534s quicker than the MP4-20, today driven by Juan Pablo Montoya.
The German worked on the set-up of the F2004 M, while Luca Badoer, driving the F2004, concentrated on development testing of Bridgestone tyres.
The F2004 M caused one of the big sensations of the day when it appeared with a strange front wing which rather looked as though a metal box had been stuck on the underside of the front wing. Should Ferrari proceed with the wing, it remains to bee seen whether the FIA will act, much like it did when several teams, including Ferrari, ran with those awful mid-wings a few years back.
Juan Pablo, who completed 72 laps, concentrating on long runs, told the team website; "I have really enjoyed my second day of testing. It was the same situation with the freezing track this morning, but once it warmed up we have been able to complete some long runs.
"Everything is going well and it has been a good first test, however until we get the car to Australia and start racing, there is no point in making any predictions."
Also on duty was Felipe Massa in the Sauber C24, as the Swiss team began a three day test.
"Because of the very low temperatures we couldn't cover many laps in the morning and were forced to wait until the weather and track conditions got better by noon," said race engineer, Mike Krack. "For this reason we were not able to run our programme as previously scheduled. We also found it difficult to achieve the right car balance today and therefore we will focus on more set-up work tomorrow to improve it."