17/02/2005
NEWS STORY
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Pedro de la Rosa topped the timesheets as McLaren brought its Barcelona test to a successful conclusion.
The Spaniard was the Woking outfit's sole representative, yet topped the timesheets for much of the day, as Juan Pablo Montoya heads off to Australia and Kimi Raikkonen recovers from his heavy crash on Tuesday. Pedro's best time of 1:14.542, is the quickest time posted by a McLaren driver this week, and will give the team much encouragement as it prepares for next week's final test (Valencia) before the season gets underway.
"This week has seen another productive test, with the race team taking over duties from the test team to allow us to iron out any issues before the Australian Grand Prix," said Martin Whitmarsh. "The strength and durability of the cars meant that Kimi was able to walk away from his accident with no more than a bruised thumb, and the mechanics did an excellent job to repair the car and allow Pedro to continue with the planned programme for the final two days of the test."
"Our final test with the MP4-20 before the start of the season in 17 days in Melbourne gave positive results to the entire team," added Norbert Haug. "On the second test day Juan Pablo did 119 laps and 551 km without any problems which was encouraging. Kimi had an accident on the first day of testing which was not his mistake and thankfully he walked away with a bruised thumb only. The mechanics did a superb job in repairing the car overnight, allowing Pedro to continue the next day and achieving almost a Grand Prix distance with the car.
"On the last day Pedro posted the fastest lap time with this car during the course of the day and ran a total of 112 laps or 518 km. In the meantime the team members in Woking, Brixworth and Stuttgart continued their challenging work to get everything ready for the first race in Australia. During the course of the preparations we put a total of a little less than 7,000 km on the new MP4-20 and we achieved several successful long runs with the new engines leading up to more than 1,800 km on an engine. Everybody in the team has had a very stressful last four months, and a good result in the first race would be the best reward for all of us."
Second quickest was Giancarlo Fisichella, as Renault lost its 'top spot' for the first time this week. The Italian was joined, once again, by Fernando Alonso, who finished sixth quickest.
The main priorities for the day were to complete race distances with both cars, prior to conducting tyre development work for Melbourne. Fernando and Giancarlo both completed race distances before lunchtime and subsequently conducted performance runs on the range of tyre compounds available for the first race. The team also completed some set-up development.
"We had a very good day today," said Christian Silk, "with both cars running pretty much trouble-free. The drivers both successfully completed race distances, completing very long runs and giving positive feedback about the performance over these long runs. In terms of lap-time, the car looked very consistent and competitive during these longer stints.
"The afternoon was dedicated to tyre development for Melbourne," he continued, "and our short performance runs provided some interesting avenues that we will pursue tomorrow over longer distances. Most reassuringly, we completed over 100 laps with both cars, and although there is still much to do before Melbourne, we are now making good progress in our preparations."
After a couple of days at the wrong half of the timesheets, Ferrari returned to familiar territory today, with Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher finishing the day third and fourth quickest.
The German carried out an endurance run, completing a total of 80 laps, while his Brazilian teammate concentrated on finding the best set-up and on development of the Bridgestone tyres.
This was the Italian outfit's last day here at Barcelona, it resumes testing at Valencia on Monday, with Schumacher and Barrichello on duty once again, ahead of next Friday's launch of its 2005 car.
It was another good day for Red Bull, with Christian Klien finishing fifth quickest, outpacing both David Coulthard and Vitantonio Liuzzi.
Nick Heidfeld was joined by Antonio Pizzonia as WilliamsF1 continued its preparations, once again, both drivers were over a second off the pace. In the morning both drivers worked on setups, before concentrating on long runs in the afternoon.
Ralf Schumacher drove the sole Toyota, the revised TF105, however, once again the car was well off the pace (1.7s).
The Jordans of Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro were left propping up the timesheets once again, yet in all fairness they appear to be improving with every day that passes. Today, the Indian driver was 3s off the pace, while his Portuguese teammate was 3.8s down on the front-runners. This is a marked improvement on the times we witnessed on Tuesday.
Their programme focussed on conducting tyre testing for Bridgestone and chassis set up work in preparation for the Australian Grand Prix as well as practising pit stops.
After the test, Narain Karthikeyan said; "I did 76 laps today and we tried a lot of new things with the car, especially tyre work for Bridgestone. We also carried out some set-up changes and we are quite happy with the progress we have been making."