01/03/2009
NEWS STORY
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel led the way at Jerez today as eight teams went head-to-head for the first time this year, all using their 2009 cars.
Other than a short shower around lunchtime, weather conditions were ideal as one of the final three tests before the Melbourne season opener got underway.
Vettel completed 87 laps of the Spanish track on his way to posting a best time of 1:19.055, 1.275s ahead of his nearest rival, Felipe Massa, who had topped the timesheets all morning.
The Brazilian driver worked on finding the best set-up on the F60 and reliability testing. By the end of the day, he had covered 63 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.20.330.
The work schedule was interrupted by several red flag stoppages, as well as a long break, shortly after midday, following an off-track excursion, although the car was not damaged.
Like Red Bull, Toyota continues to show an impressive pace, with Kamui Kobayashi finishing third quickest. The Japanese youngster went through a programme of aerodynamic evaluations. Timo Glock takes over tomorrow.
"This morning was my first real chance to try out the TF109 in dry conditions," said Kobayashi. "From the first run the car felt easy to drive so we were able to get straight into our programme of aero work. It certainly feels like a step forward from last year. The shower interrupted our afternoon but we still made it through our programme. Overall it went well so this was a good day of testing for us."
"Today we have had very different conditions compared to what we experienced at our last test in Bahrain," added Pascal Vasselon. "Now we are back in a typical European winter. This cooler weather leads to tyre graining, which means we have had to monitor the tyre situation carefully in order to be able to draw conclusions. We have also had to manage the weather conditions but Kamui has completed some useful aerodynamic work and we've had a trouble-free day."
Williams also continues to impress, with Nico Rosberg completing 71 laps on the way to posting the fourth best time of the day.
For BMW, the main focus of today's programme was to test the 2010 specification tyres. The goal being to give the Bridgestone engineers feedback on next year's compounds. Robert Kubica was at the wheel for the first of the team's five days of testing in Jerez.
In the morning the team decided to make a precautionary engine change after sensors indicated there was a problem. It then began to drizzle just as Kubica resumed his programme. As several parts of the track were wet, the team switched from tyre testing to race start simulations.
"Unfortunately I couldn't drive as many laps as planned," said the Pole. "In the afternoon the session was interrupted by five red flags and the changing weather", Robert Kubica said after completing 47 laps. "Because of this I expect a very busy day tomorrow."
It was a good day for Force India, as the brand new VMJ02 was driven in anger for the first time. The Italian completed just 31 laps but finished sixth on the timesheets, ahead of McLaren and Renault. The team admits that given the relatively late debut of the car, today's programme was designed to give as much running as possible, complete systems checks and accumulate the maximum possible amount of data going into the start of the season.
The VJM02 experienced some downtime when an issue with the fuel system developed following initial runs. However, Fisichella was able to complete much of the programme and was encouraged by the improved performance of the 2009 challenger.
"It is a bit frustrating as we could only do 31 laps today," said the Italian, "especially as it is very important to try and get as many as possible as we are already late compared to the other teams. I'm am however quite surprised and happy about what I felt with the behaviour of the car today. It's very promising and I felt much more consistency, even under braking, and more stability in the high speed corners. We need to improve the traction a bit and also the oversteering after a few laps, but this is a problem others have had as well. The lap time is good and I am quite pleased as we did it with one set of new tyres and I know I can do much better than this. We are not that far away from the other people so I am looking forward to tomorrow and another day with more laps where we can try to improve the car a little bit and concentrate on reliability."
"Thanks to McLaren, Mercedes and all the guys back at the factory for all their hard work in getting the car ready for this test," said Technical Director, James Key. "Given the timeframe we've had, to get laps in here is a major achievement. It was certainly good to be running today for the first time at a test following our shakedown last week.
"The rain didn't come today as much as expected so we got more time than we thought, although it was difficult to get a clear run with the numerous red flags. We also had one simple issue that halted our running, a fuel system problem. We don't feel it is fundamental, we just need to get to the bottom of fixing it. Other than this, the car ran very well and behaved as expected. We got a lot of good feedback from Giancarlo and his feel for what the car is doing within its parameters. We will do more running tomorrow, as we need to run through some more baseline set-up as we could only do one set up change here today."
At McLaren, Pedro de la Rosa evaluated compounds and casings for Bridgestone's 2010-spec rubber. Next year's tyres will be different as they will no longer be pre-heated in blankets and must also sustain cars running with heavier fuel-loads due to the ban on refuelling. While the team conducted some work using blankets, the prime runs were done without pre-heating, providing Bridgestone with useful data for next season.
Despite the day's session being punctuated by several red flags, the team completed 94 laps before an oil pressure sensor brought the Spaniard to a premature halt out on the circuit with just 10 minutes of the session remaining.
"Running without tyre blankets makes it harder to get heat into the tyre," said de la Rosa at the conclusion of the day's programme, "but that's the objective for next year and that's why Bridgestone will supply the teams with different compounds. We managed a lot of laps today and the work with the tyres was very positive."
Nelson Piquet, was behind the wheel of the Renault as the French team continued with its development programme. Despite losing track time with some technical issues, the Brazilian began evaluating new development items and worked on various set-up options, completing a total of 52 laps by the end of the day.
Piquet remains in the car for a second day of work tomorrow before Fernando joins the team for Tuesday and Wednesday.
"We had a few issues with the car today which limited our mileage," admitted the Brazilian, "but we still managed to evaluate some of the new parts we brought to this test. The track was improving throughout the day as we had a lot of cars running and so it should get better and better throughout the week. Looking ahead to tomorrow, the priority is to get more miles under our belt - the weather should be similar so hopefully we will get another dry day."
"It was quite a difficult day with limited mileage due to some small problems that we had on the car," added Christian Silk. "As a result we didn't get as much set-up work done as we would have liked, but the engineers still have some interesting data that they will go through this evening. The priority for the rest of the week is to continue adding mileage to the car and continuing with our set-up work."