08/02/2007
NEWS STORY
As forecast, the rain arrived late on Wednesday evening, carried on through the night and for much of the day, severely disrupting the final day of testing at Jerez de la Frontera.
There had been talk of staying on and continuing testing on Friday, but with further rain forecast, and the teams due to begin testing in Barcelona on Monday, the teams did the best they could under the circumstances.
Renault decided early in the day the to continue was pointless, having sent Nelson Piquet and Ricardo Zonta out for a couple of exploratory laps.
The team decided that running in the conditions would be of little benefit, especially in light of the fact that the team's two test drivers were scheduled to take to the track. While the race drivers would have been able to gain useful experience of the Bridgestone tyres in the wet, this was not the case for the test drivers, who will rarely be called upon to run in the wet.
The French outfit therefore chose to begin preparations for its Barcelona test next week, and gave the technical teams a valuable opportunity to practice in-garage procedures as they prepare for the opening races of the year.
"It was a shame not to run today," admitted Christian Silk, "but we felt this was the best solution for the team today. We therefore devoted much of the day to giving the mechanics a chance to train in certain procedures for the opening race, which was a useful exercise. But we already know that we will have a very busy week in Barcelona."
Topping the timesheets at the end of a decidedly soggy day was Nick Heidfeld, with BMW teammate Timo Glock finishing third. Due to conditions the German team decided to stop testing at mid-day.
Glock who was having his first run in the F1.07 started the day with practice starts on extreme weather tyres. He then changed to standard wet tyres and worked on baseline set-ups together with systems and diagnostics checks.
Heidfeld also tested the extreme weather tyres before switching to standard wet tyres. The German then worked on fine tuning the traction control and also made some diagnostics checks.
Once again, the Williams FW29 showed promise, with Alexander Wurz finishing second quickest and Nico Rosberg fifth.
"We have now finished the initial run with the FW29," said Sam Michael. On our final day, we completed some more useful work with Alex and Nico on the brakes, while also carrying out further systems checks and verifying the set-up of the car in the damp conditions. Overall, it was a pleasing start and we are concentrating on making as many improvements as we can before Melbourne."
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa were on duty for Ferrari, the Maranello duo using the conditions to work on wet set-ups for the F2007. Both drivers are back in action on Monday at Barcelona.
Rubens Barrichello finished sixth quickest, having completed 66 laps on the way to posting a best time 1.19s off the pace. The Brazilian spent the day working on the balance and set-up of the new chassis in the changing track conditions, using the wet and extreme wet Bridgestone Potenza tyres.
On the other side of the garage, Marco Andretti had his first chance to experience an F1 car in wet conditions, the American youngster completing 63 laps.
"It's been awesome to have the chance to get back in a F1 car this week," said Andretti at the end of the session. "I have really enjoyed my two days here, and by the end of the second day with the wet conditions, I feel that I've really adapted to the way that the car has to be driven. So the weather was actually quite useful for me and I've now experienced a little bit of everything in only three days. I was happy with my long run pace over the test but the one lap times are something that I am sure would come with further time in the car."
"The main focus for the RA107 with Jenson and Rubens this week was to develop the race set-up of the car to achieve consistent lap times on longer
runs," said Engineering Director, Jacky Eeckelaert. "Over the course of the three days we had the opportunity to evaluate many changes in the aerodynamic configuration and mechanical set-up of the car, as well as with the electronic systems. With Christian at the wheel of the RA106, we also concluded the transition from last year's car to fully focus on the RA107."
"It has been a pleasure to have Marco Andretti with us this week," he added, "and to give him a further opportunity in the 2006 car. Once again Marco has shown a high level of ability, given his relative inexperience, and his long run pace in particular was quite impressive. With the poor weather conditions today, Marco drove for the first time in the wet and adapted very well to the difficult track conditions without making any mistakes."
Toyota, lie its rivals, used the conditions to work on wet set-ups, as well as systems checks, concentrating on an updated transmission, which Jarno Trulli put through its paces. The Italian completed almost 400kms and gained plenty of data which the team will now use to take advantage of the upgrade's full potential.
"We expected a lot of rain today and unfortunately that is what we got," said Test Team Manager, Gerd Pfeiffer. "With such bad weather, we had to adapt our programme and we looked at car set-up in wet conditions, as we as gaining more data about the behaviour of the extreme wet tyres.
"One of the main points for today was to run checks on the transmission update we were testing and Jarno did a lot of laps without any trouble. He brought in some useful information which we will now analyse, so that went well. Franck was evaluating various set-up options in wet conditions and he also did a lot of laps which is very helpful to us."
It was another 'difficult' day for Red Bull, with both drivers suffering more than their fair share of problems. Inevitably, on a car that has virtually no carry-over parts from its predecessor, the three days have not gone completely smoothly, with a drive shaft failure and a gearbox glitch interrupting proceedings.
"But it was still a productive test, during which we got through all our planned programme and made progress over the three days," maintained Chief Test Engineer, Ian Morgan. "The working relationship with Renault continues to grow and we got on top of our problems, covering a respectable mileage."
Due to the conditions, McLaren chose to limit its running with the MP4-22's. Fernando Alonso had already completed a large amount of kilometres on the Bridgestone Potenza extreme and full wet tyres last week in Valencia, and as a result the team chose to run him for only 9 laps in the morning.
Meanwhile, Pedro de la Rosa completed a limited programme, working on further understanding the set-up of the car for wet conditions.
The teams will now make a mad dash Barcelona, where testing resumes on Monday morning.
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