16/02/2009
NEWS STORY
BMW's Christian Klien topped the timesheets today as the second week of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir got underway.
On the first of four days testing this week, Klien completed 131 laps as he worked on the mechanical and aero set-up of the car, as well as trying different tyre compounds.
"Today was a very productive day", said the Austrian. "We collected a lot of data and I even did a long run at the end of the session. Again we didn't have a single technical problem, which is very encouraging."
The German team continues here tomorrow when Nick Heidfeld will be on duty.
Kimi Raikkonen had an extensive programme, working on the different set ups, the development of several mechanical and aerodynamic components and comparing the different tyres over long stints.
"It was a very intense day," said the Finn, before heading off to his engineers for a briefing. "We tried to make up the time we lost last week, although in the morning we had some minor problems which slowed us down a bit.
"I'm satisfied with how things went," he added. "The car reacts very well to our set ups and confirms to deliver a constant performance on the long run. Let's hope the weather remains like this so we can drive many more kilometres until the end of this session."
Toyota made a positive start with Jarno Trulli completing a mammoth total of 141 laps of the Sakhir circuit. The Japanese team appears to be making progress and Trulli made full use of the time available, going through a programme of mechanical and aerodynamic set-up along with tyre comparisons. The Italian will return to the helm tomorrow as the test continues.
"We made it through way more than two race distances today," said Trulli, "in fact I think this is my personal best for mileage at a test day! So I'd say this was a positive and productive day. There were a lot of items to test on a full programme and we got through everything. We made good progress and we were consistently competitive all day long. This has been a good start to our second week here."
"Today was obviously a very good test session," added Pascal Vasselon, "which allows us further to recover from the two days we lost to the sandstorm last week. We ran without any problems and we achieved an impressive mileage of more than 750km. Jarno completed a lot of runs which allowed us to work through many items of mechanical set-up, aerodynamic set-up and tyre compound comparisons. Everything is working to plan at the moment, the car seems quick and reliable so all in all a positive day in preparation for the race season."
At the end of the day's programme all three drivers carried out a number of practice starts from the starting grid.