25/02/2008
NEWS STORY
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McLaren's Lewis Hamilton edged out the Ferraris of World Champions Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher as the final pre-season test got underway at Barcelona today.
With the track already wet from overnight rain, matters weren't helped by a further downpour this morning. However, as the day continued, conditions began to improve, and though it remained overcast, the ten teams on duty were able to test in the dry.
Hamilton was joined by his 208 teammate, Heikki Kovalainen as the Woking outfit spent the morning practising pit stop procedures for its race team. In the afternoon, on the drying track, the team carried out final evaluations of new components and fine tuned set ups for the start of the season.
Between them, the Woking duo completed 149 laps, with Hamilton posting a best time just 0.043s quicker than Raikkonen and 0.152s quicker than Schumacher.
After not being able to run last week, courtesy of the difficult weather conditions, Raikkonen was delighted to be able to return to work today at the wheel of an F2008 fitted with the latest aerodynamic updates. He and Schumacher completed 165 laps, suffering no problems during the course of the day.
Once again, Williams was impressive, with Kazuki Nakajima finishing fourth and teammate Nico Rosberg sixth on the timesheets. "This morning's rain hampered Kazuki's running somewhat," admitted Test Team Manager, Dickie Stanford, "but the drier conditions in the afternoon allowed him to do some set-up work. Nico
focussed on engine system checks and successfully completed a race run towards the end of the day."
Renault had Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet on duty, along with members of the race team as the team conducts its final rehearsal before travelling to the opening Grand Prix in Melbourne in three weeks time.
The French team was therefore operating with a Grand Prix set-up and concentrated on running through race procedures. Having endured wet conditions during the previous week, it was not until the middle of the morning that the team was able to switch to dry tyres. The Enstone-based outfit was still able to conduct race simulation work in the morning and ran through grid procedures as both drivers sampled the wet conditions early on. For the afternoon, the conditions improved and the focus shifted to pit- stop practice. In all close to 20 pit stops were carried out.
"We spent most of the day doing pit stop practice with the mechanics and everything went ok; no problems," said Alonso. "It was important to do this to get everybody ready for the first race in Australia. The track was wet in the morning, just like last week, but it did not affect what we were working on and we are happy with the work we completed."
"Today was a chance for the team to try out its procedures and to prepare for the first race of the season," added Piquet. "We did some wet-weather running in the morning, but it was all part of the simulation work we had planned and was mainly for the engineers to learn about strategy. We were only simulating procedures, so we were not really pushing that much today. Towards the end of the day we were able to do a little bit of work on the performance of the car and started looking at the set-up, which we will continue tomorrow."
"Obviously the weather was not great again," said admitted Christian Silk, "but it did not affect our programmes. We did some race simulation work in the morning, and pit-stop work in the afternoon, which was all fine. Towards the end of the day we managed to get out for a final run to get a feel for the balance of the car and that went well. So a good first day's testing, which should put us in a good position to get on with the main programme tomorrow."
For BMW, Nick Heidfeld and the German team's new test driver Christian Klien continued to work on the set-up of the F1.08. Driving the car in dry conditions for the first time Klien further familiarized himself with the car doing system checks and some basic set-up work. In the afternoon both drivers followed the team's program as scheduled, the main focus being collecting data using some new parts.
The Force India VJM01 - which is based on the is based on the B-spec F8-VII that Spyker launched at the 2007 Italian Grand Prix - made a fairly impressive debut, with Adrian Sutil (above) and Tonio Liuzzi both finishing within a second of pace-setter Hamilton.
The focus today for both drivers was understanding the behaviour of the new aero package. The team made good progress, working through different set-up options to maximise the balance on the car. Completing 100 laps between them, Sutil ended the day ninth quickest, while Liuzzi was twelfth.
"It was not a bad day today," said the German. "I think the car ran without any major problems and the balance we got in the end was quite OK. We had some small issues, first with getting heat into the tyres and then the pressure so it was not perfect, but we should be happy. For the first day with a new car I am confident as I can feel there is something more to come."
"It was a pretty difficult day," added Liuzzi, "as we did not run that much as we had quite a few problems in the afternoon. It was also a shame that the weather was not better and we could not do too many laps. The balance, considering the conditions seemed OK, and the few laps we did in the dry seemed a step forward from last year's car. It felt a bit more balanced and we still have to understand more on the settings, but from the few laps we did in the dry it was quite a good feeling.'
"Today was a very productive day today," said Mike Gascoyne, "considering we were running new parts and an aero package we hadn't tested before. We were running 60% of the aero package we will use in Australia, and it seemed to go well. Despite the usual red flag periods and bad weather conditions, we managed to do a fair few laps with Adrian, but unfortunately we had an unscheduled engine change for Tonio's car over lunch, which cut short his time. Although both drivers initially had some understeer issues, we seemed to understand it by the end of the day and all things considered it was a good opening day to the test. I think we can expect more tomorrow."
Mark Webber and David Coulthard were on duty for Red Bull, with both drivers following a similar programme, focusing on mechanical set-up, brake development work and general pre-race preparation.
According to the Milton Keynes outfit, Webber had a "useful" day at the wheel of his car before swapping to drive the 02 chassis towards the end of the session. This was to get a base-line reading from the current set-up of the 02 chassis, before new development parts are added to it ahead of the second day of testing.
Scuderia Toro Rosso is running one car this week, as the second race chassis is being prepared at the Faenza factory ahead of the first race of the season. Today, Sebastian Vettel was the man on duty.
"The morning was wet, so we only made a single run on dry tyres a few minutes before the lunch break," said a spokesman. "We did manage to do some long runs on both extreme wet and standard wet tyres however, so it was still a productive morning.
"This afternoon we aimed to complete a race simulation, but unfortunately we had to stop the car due to a mechanical problem."
For Toyota, Timo Glock and Kamui Kobayashi were at the wheel. The German had a full day's running, putting in 70 laps of work on mechanical set-up. Kobayashi had his running restricted in the unsettled conditions to preserve mileage and tyres. Toyota will continue testing at the Circuit de Catalunya tomorrow with Jarno Trulli and Glock scheduled to drive.
"Again, these were not the ideal conditions for testing because of the damp start to the action," said Glock. "We did some running in the morning but not much because the track was changing so much. It became more stable during the second half of the afternoon and that went better for me. We worked on finding a set-up direction to suit my driving style better. We found an improved car balance and I was much happier with it today. We couldn't try everything because we were a bit short of time in the afternoon but it was a good day."
"It was another quiet morning for me," added Kobayashi. "We did not want to waste mileage and tyres on a damp track so I did only an installation lap. Once the track dried out after lunch we were able to do more work. We did some set-up and weight distribution work and we made some progress despite the limited running time. The car felt more balanced and we are heading in the right direction."
"We really regret not testing in Spa over these past two weeks," added Pascal Vasselon wryly, "because the weather in Belgium has been much better than it's been here in Spain. Today again started in conditions that are very difficult for testing because the track was constantly changing through the morning and it's very difficult to do comparisons. So we waited until the beginning of the afternoon to start work on mechanical set-up, which we tried to refine on both cars in preparation for aerodynamics testing tomorrow. The forecast is better for tomorrow so we are hopeful of a dry day."
Yet again, Honda was at the wrong end of the timesheets, Rubens Barrichello and Alex Wurz both over 2s off the pace. In the morning, the Brackley duo completed a qualifying programme running on both the extreme wet and the wet Bridgestone tyres in the changing conditions. The circuit dried out sufficiently by the start of the afternoon for the drivers to run dry tyres throughout their afternoon programme of full race distances with live pit stops.
Jenson Button will take over from Wurz for the second day of the test tomorrow.
Today's red flags, of which, thankfully, there were few, were brought out by Heidfeld (technical), Vettel (spin) and Piquet (accident).