26/02/2008
NEWS STORY
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On the penultimate day of testing before the teams head off to Melbourne for the first round of the 2008 Formula One World Championship, McLaren continued to set the pace, with Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen topping the timesheets.
Today's session was entirely dry, with no damp track in the morning, and the sun frequently popping out from behind the clouds, allowing the ten teams on duty to get down to some real work.
The Woking outfit concentrated on pit stop practices and qualifying simulations in the morning, moving the focus to longer runs in the afternoon: the plan being to assess different fuel loads and the various set-ups these require. Both drivers stopped out on track in the morning, within seventeen minutes of one another, as a result of fuel coupling issues, which the team managed to quickly resolve without any impact on the days' planned programme.
Third quickest was Kimi Raikkonen, who was joined by his teammate, Felipe Massa. Both drivers worked on the development of the F2008 and on preparations for the start of the season, with the Brazilian also completing successfully a race simulation. The Finn stopped on track shortly before lunch having encountered an unspecified technical problem which was soon rectified.
Splitting the Maranello cars was Nico Rosberg as Williams continues to impress. "Nico once again concentrated on set-up work all day today ready for Australia," said Test Team Manager, Dickie Stanford. "Kazuki Nakajima, in the second FW30, also did some set-up work in the morning followed by a race run which he successfully completed in the afternoon."
Another team which appears to be making progress is Force India, with Giancarlo Fisichella finishing sixth on the timesheets, and test driver Tonio Liuzzi finishing tenth. The Italian duo both had encouraging days, completing set-up work in the morning and race and qualifying simulations in the afternoon. Both programmes went without major problems with the drivers completing 191 laps in total.
"It was a good day," said Fisichella. "We did over 100 laps and worked through all the schedule. I was struggling with the front locking at first, but then we understood what the problem was and made a change so the car was back to normal and at the end I was comfortable and confident and able to improve my lap times. I am happy with the new package, it is better with more downforce and has more stability, but we have still got something more for the first race so it looks quite encouraging."
"Today was a much better test," added Liuzzi, "and we achieved a lot of kilometres and had no issues with the car. It seems to be getting better and better as we felt yesterday. We seem to have made a step forward from last year's car and now we are tuning the little details. We did some long runs and short runs for both qualifying and race simulations and were pretty happy. We still have some work to do, but we are for sure going in a good direction. The engineers did a great job - it was a tough programme between myself and Giancarlo but we both had no issues reliability wise and were very competitive over the day."
"Again a very productive day of testing," said Mike Gascoyne. "We had no major reliability issues and despite the numerous red flags, we were able to work through the whole programme, with both drivers doing set up work in the morning and then race distances in the afternoon with pit stop practice. That went very well on both cars, so it was overall a good day. Thanks very much to Tonio for his two days of testing, we have definitely made progress with the new package and are very pleased so far.'
Adrian Sutil will take over from Liuzzi for the final day of testing, while Fisichella remains for his second day.
With David Coulthard sidelined by neck pain, it would appear that both he and Mark Webber will be under pressure following today's performance by Sebastian Vettel, who was drafted in to drive the second Red Bull. The German youngster, who completed 110 laps, finished seventh on the timesheets, exactly 0.9s faster than the Australian.
"Unfortunately David suffered a trapped nerve in his neck yesterday," said Christian Horner, "so we took the precautionary measure of giving him a day to recover ahead of the final day of testing and this near to the start of the season.
"It was logical to use Sebastian Vettel," he continued, "evaluating various important pre-Melbourne developments. We're grateful to Toro Rosso for making him available to us today. All being well, David will be back in the car tomorrow morning."
Webber's programme focused on evaluating some new development car parts in preparation for Melbourne and his day was therefore mainly data driven. Although some minor issues cost the team some time, valuable information was gained ahead of the first race. Vettel quickly acclimatised himself with the RB4, and focused on evaluating various set-ups.
For BMW, Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld continued to work on the mechanical and aerodynamical set-up of the F1.08 as well as gaining more experience with the standard ECU. Both drivers followed different testing schedules in preparation for the first race of the 2008 season, completing 173 laps in total.
In the morning Nick Heidfeld made a precautionary stop on track when a warning light came on. The problem was tracked to a minor technical issue which was solved on the spot, allowing the German to resume after a few minutes. Kubica also stopped twice in the opening hour, with an unspecified problem, both times at Turn 10. During the day the BMW duo also conducted several practice starts and practice pit stops simulating race and qualifying conditions.
Jenson Button made it into the Top Ten for Honda, albeit 1.425s off the pace, while teammate Rubens Barrichello finished the day fourteenth. The Brackley drivers focused on qualifying and race distance simulations, complete with live pit-stops, today. Unfortunately neither driver was able to complete their full planned race distances this afternoon as their running was brought to an earlier than planned conclusion with two different issues stopping the RA108 cars on their second stints. The team have identified the cause of today’s problems and will be implementing the required fixes quickly.
Alex Wurz will re-join the test programme tomorrow for the final day to take over from Barrichello.
Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock both had busy days as Toyota continued to collect data in preparation for Melbourne on March 16. Both drivers did aero testing along with work on brakes and set-up. Both drivers will return to the track tomorrow hoping for similar conditions for the last full day of testing.
"We have made good progress today," said Trulli. "We made it through a lot of different set-up work and we had a strong long run in the afternoon. The car seems more suited to long runs than to a single flying lap at the moment. So we still have some work to do in order to get a qualifying lap because that is important for the race. But in general it was a positive day."
"After all the disruptions due to the weather it was good to get a full day of running at last," added Glock. "But it was a difficult day for me. We spent the day looking at set-up but with all the changes we struggled to make the most of the improved track conditions and the extra grip. So we will have to analyse why that is overnight and aim to make a step forward tomorrow."
"Finally we had a full dry day during which we could work quite a lot and move forwards in our preparations for Melbourne," said Pascal Vasselon. "Now we have all the information to decide the aero configuration for race one. The new aerodynamics package we brought here is a clear step forward. Things went quite well with our race preparation for Jarno. We will dedicate tomorrow to refinement but basically we are very pleased with his pace today. Timo was running a different programme and we will have to review the set-up direction with him tomorrow to see how we can help him to progress."
Renault continued with Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet. As the French team worked on race procedures and pit stops yesterday, it switched its attention to working on the performance of the cars today. Alonso spent the day running through an aero programme and tried various things with the car, while Piquet resumed the set-up work he had begun at the end of yesterday. For the final day tomorrow the team will make a final push in the last day of running and will continue practicing race procedures to be ready for the opening race of the season.
"It was a good day," said Alonso, "especially as it was dry for the whole day. We continued testing the latest parts and updates before Melbourne and it was a good time to check that everything is working well. We still need to find some performance in the car, and some pace, but we have the potential and we just need to discover it. There is only one day of testing left, and we need to fully attack tomorrow to make the most of it."
"We did not complete as many laps as we would have liked," admitted Piquet, "but it was still a productive day and we learnt some things in the morning and gathered some interesting data. As a rookie, time in the car is so valuable and every time I drive the car I feel more and more comfortable. For sure it would be nice to have some more time to prepare for the first race, but we have made the most of the time we had available. We are back to race simulations tomorrow, and if we have time we will try and do some long runs."
"Good circuit conditions today," said Christian Silk, "so we could get on with our programmes. We had some interesting stuff to try that had arrived from the factory and we go some good results from that. We also did some aerodynamic development and some chassis set-up work, which gave some positive results. So another good day's work, and we'll take that into tomorrow and continue with our preparations for the first race in Melbourne. "
Toro Rosso originally planned for Sebastian Vettel to drive all of Monday and on Tuesday morning, before Sebastien Bourdais was to take over driving duties for the remainder. However, as the Frenchman was already at the circuit when Red Bull Racing asked to borrow Vettel to replace David Coulthard, the Italian team was happy to oblige.
As a result, Bourdais undertook a full day of testing for the team, racking up 98 trouble-free laps aboard his STR2B. The main focus of the day was to improve the mechanical grip and the technicians are said to be satisfied with the results. Bourdais will be back at the wheel tomorrow for the final day of testing.