01/02/2011
NEWS STORY
 |
Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets on the first day of testing at Valencia, as the season roars into life. Nico Hulkenberg is second quickest, ahead of Gary Paffett and Paul di Resta.
In addition to posting the fastest time of the day, Vettel also completed the most laps, the new RB7 completing 93 laps of the Spanish track on its way to a best time of 1:13.769.
The Austrian team used the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the car and it was the first chance it had had to use the Pirelli tyres since the Abu Dhabi test.
"We had a very good shakedown today and completed everything we aimed to on day one," said Head of Race Engineering, Ian Morgan. "It's an encouraging start to what we hope will be a successful season for the RB7."
"It was good today," said Vettel, "and I felt comfortable in the car, I enjoyed it. It was day one for most of us and there's a long way to go with testing ahead of the season and a very long racing season after that - with 20 races - so things can change! We've only made the first step today, but we had a reliable day and can be very proud of what we have achieved so far."
Force India's programme got underway with Nico Hülkenberg and Paul di Resta undertaking their first official driving duties for the team since their confirmation in the line-up last Wednesday. The team used the VJM03 - last year's challenger - to gather further tyre data while valuable development work is continued on the VJM04 in the wind tunnel back at Silverstone.
Hulkenberg was first out in the car, completing 71 laps in total with a best time of 1:13.938, the second quickest time of the day, as he got up to speed with the car and the different protocols and procedures employed by the team.
Di Resta took over in the late afternoon to complete his baseline runs in advance of his first full day of testing tomorrow. The Scot posted the fourth best time of the day after 28 laps. He will continue tomorrow with Adrian Sutil taking over for the final day.
"Generally a very productive and promising first day with the team," said Hulkenberg. "The main goal was principally for me to get used to the team, the car and the new Pirelli tyres and my impressions of all were pretty positive. It was great to be back in an F1 car and I got back up to speed quicker than I thought. Programme-wise I worked through the different set-ups on the car and was able to complete a lot of laps, which gave me a good first understanding of how the Pirelli tyres worked as I was not able to do any running at the tyre test last year. I really enjoyed the day and am looking forward to working with the team over the coming weeks as we prepare for the start of the season."
"A short outing for me today," added di Resta, "but good to get back in the car and out on track again after a couple of months off. And great to be back in the team environment knowing that this is all building up to the start of my first season in F1. We completed just under 30 laps to get ready for the full day tomorrow. I think we're in good shape to get through the full programme and get the information we need to feed into the development of the new car."
"Our strategy for this test was to use the VJM3 to gain our drivers some early season mileage and collect as much data on the Pirelli tyres as possible," said circuit engineering director, Dominic Harlow. "Overall we achieved our objectives today, looking at the three compounds available here and with both Nico and Paul driving the car. Fortunately the weather for the coming two days is forecast to remain fairly good and we look forward to continuing with our work over the remaining two days."
With the launch of its 2011 car scheduled for Friday, for McLaren, this week's three-day test centres on Pirelli tyre development using one of last year's MP4-25s.
"The car we ran today ought to allow us to get the right loadings on the Pirellis to understand how they behave," said Gary Paffett, who finished third overall, splitting the two 2010 Force Indias. "The tyres have changed since we last ran them in Abu Dhabi last year, and they'll change again before the start of the season.
"Today was about trying to understand the tyres - we established a good baseline and then did some long runs. Happily, the wear issues we experienced in Abu Dhabi have definitely improved; we saw better wear patterns and fewer problems with the tyres.
"It's useful to understand how the tyres go off, and how the balance changes once they do. The Medium seems to last the longest and the Super-soft the shortest, but that's exactly what you want from a tyre - and it should lead to different strategies once we start racing."
Lewis Hamilton takes over at the wheel tomorrow, continuing the Woking outfit's programme of understanding and developing the new Pirelli rubber.
Fernando Alonso gave the Ferrari F150 its official track debut, after its launch last Friday in Maranello. The Spanish driver worked mainly on general car development and on gaining further understanding of the Pirelli tyres. By the end of the day, which was completed without any significant technical problems, he had done a total of 98 laps, the quickest in a time of 1.14.553.
After yesterday's unveiling and roll out on demo tyres for filming purposes, the Sauber C30 completed its first day of testing. Kamui Kobayashi was on duty to get the first impressions of the new car.
"It was a bit of a trouble shooting day," said the Japanese youngster, "as we had to check all the various new systems and sort things out. But that is no problem, as it is something you just have to go through. However, due to the work with the new systems we had no time for proper performance runs. The grip of the new tyres dropped off quite quickly. This is something you can improve with set up work, but for the reasons mentioned we did not really have time for that. Anyway we will continue to learn."
"It was a busy day," added technical director James Key, "with all the little problems you have to look into at this time of the year when testing begins with a brand new car. The important and good thing is we had absolutely no major issues and the car was running well. We used the morning for several system checks and some initial set up work.
"We only used the KERS and the rear wing activation in the afternoon," he continued. "Tyre degradation was quite high and we will have to keep an eye on that for the remainder of the test. Of course there is plenty of work to do, but we are fine with what we have learned and achieved so far today."
Virgin's new Belgian driver Jerome D'Ambrosio was at the wheel of the 2010 VR-01 to undertake the first laps of the year, before testing with the new MVR-02 commences in Jerez next week.
In warm and sunny conditions, he completed 71 laps and the team were able to work through a detailed programme of systems evaluation and tyre testing with the new-for-2011 Pirelli rubber.
Tomorrow it will be Timo Glock's turn in the car for the first of his two days of running, when he will continue to evaluate new parts ahead of the roll-out of the new MVR-02 next week in Jerez.
"Today was an excellent day," said D'Ambrosio, "I was really looking forward to driving the car for the first time as a Formula One driver. It really is an amazing feeling and I'm really excited for the season ahead. I think today was a good start. I'm getting used to the Pirelli tyres and working really well with the team, who are doing a great job. Now I can't wait for my next day in the car, which will be in Jerez and driving the new MVR-02 car."
"It's great to be back," added team principal, John Booth. "We are really looking forward to our second season in Formula 1. Jerome did a very good job today in the car and I'm really pleased with how the team is working. We have started out on the right note but there is still a lot to be done. We are heading in the right direction and I'm very pleased with the way things are progressing at this very early stage."
Vitaly Petrov had the honour of giving the R31 its first run, the Russian completing 28 laps on his way to posting the eight quickest time of the day.
"It's great to come back for the new season and try the R31 for the first time," said the Russian. "It was not the perfect day because we had some mechanical problems and we lost a little bit of time, so we did not do many laps. But we did manage to check a lot of systems on the car, which was important for us and it looks like everything is working well. I tried KERS for the first time and it will take me a while to get used to it because it's clear the driver will be quite busy in the cockpit this year. I also tried out the Pirellis, but it was difficult for me to learn too much because we were not pushing too hard and we mostly did in and out laps."
"It's obviously exciting to be back at the track after a long winter and to see the R31 complete its first few laps," added Eric Boullier. "It's still very early days and the car did not run a lot today, so there was a little bit of frustration for Vitaly because he would have liked to get more miles under his belt. But this is to be expected at the first test, which is basically more of a shakedown for the car and the time to check reliability to make sure everything is working as we expected. For the remaining two days our focus will be on validating the systems and collecting data so that we can get down to performance work at the remaining tests.
"Some mechanical niggles with the car meant that we spent more time in the garage today that we would have liked," admitted technical director James Allison. "As a consequence our day became more of a shakedown of all the new systems than an opportunity to explore performance. We learned that the car runs comfortably within our design temperature limits and we gained some useful running on both the new DCS rear wing and the KERS. The next days of testing should bring us a better idea of the performance of the car."
"We had KERS fitted today and," said Alan Permane, "although we did not run it a great deal, the energy recovery and releasing was working fine. Another new aspect you have to assess with a new car is the cooling around the engine and gearbox, which is very tightly packaged on the R31.The checks we did today suggest everything is okay with this.
"Our running was limited as we were held up with a brake line leak. Although it's a simple problem, it meant we had to remove the gearbox to solve the issue, costing us track time.
The new Silver Arrow was unveiled by Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg in the pit lane this morning and the youngster was the first to get behind the wheel of the car once the action got underway.
He completed nine laps before coming to a stop on track with a hydraulics problem. The team worked hard to fix the issue, thereby enabling Schumacher to go out at the end of the day to complete his first exploratory laps. Rosberg will drive again tomorrow with Schumacher completing the programme on Thursday.
"The good thing is that I felt completely at home and comfortable in the cockpit straight away this morning," said Rosberg. "Initial impressions are very difficult to make as we've now changed to the Pirelli tyres but the feeling was very good. It just feels like a better car in general and it will be good to have a full day to really make progress tomorrow."
"It has always been and is still very special to go out in a new car for the first time," added Schumacher, "and I very much enjoyed today even if it was just a few laps that we could do. Maybe you could sum it up with: interesting but short! It was mainly about doing a few system checks today and I am looking forward to the laps to come. All in all, I am very happy after today's launch of our new baby, and I can't wait for the season to start."
"It felt good to see the MGP W02 finally take to the track after so much hard work from everyone at the factory to prepare the car for this first test," said Ross Brawn. "Michael and Nico felt comfortable and had a good feeling from the car, although we were limited in the mileage that we achieved today. We had a hydraulic problem early on which limited Nico's running but were able to change the system to get Michael out for a few laps at the end. The first tests are about focusing on reliability, which admittedly was not great today, and getting the KERS system functioning well. Performance testing will develop over the next month as we get more running under our belts."
Jaime Alguersuari was on duty for Toro Rosso, the Spaniard completing 20 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:17.214 in the car launched just a few hours earlier.
Brazilian veteran Rubens Barrichello was eleventh fastest, completing 78 laps in the interim liveried Williams FW33.
"I couldn't wait to get back in the car," said the Brazilian. "Unfortunately we lost a lot of time in the morning so we were trying to play catch up in the afternoon. We did some good laps and some long runs in the car. It is too early to say how we are performing but we will now spend time to try and understand the car a little better."
"It's been a good day in terms of getting through things," added Sam Michael. "We had a problem with KERS this morning so we didn't use it in the afternoon. Besides that, everything else on the car is working and we didn't have any problems with temperatures, pressures and all the systems are working fine. We now plan to do more mileage and setup work tomorrow. The moveable rear wing also worked fine today so all in all a pretty good first day."
Hispania enjoyed support from a number of local fans. The Spanish outfit, which last year did not manage to do any pre-season testing, showed its new driver, Narain Karthikeyan, for the first time. The Indian completed a total of 45 laps, clocking a best time of 1.18.020.
"On our first test, we are happy to start on one of our home tracks, here in Valencia," said Colin Kolles. "In the morning, the track was still green but improved during the day. We had a good day and could run out our program. Narain made no mistakes, and he is still building up his speed. He has to adapt himself again to Formula 1, to get used to the high G-forces and to the new Pirelli tyres. We have to analyze the data of today’s testing and I am looking forwards to see how Narain progresses on the following days."
"It did not seem to be easy to drive the new car after all this time," said Karthikeyan, "but finally it was not that difficult. I got into it quite quickly and yes, we could have done some more laps but we have some minor problems, but all and all I am very happy to be back, and I think the body and the mind did pretty well, so I am looking forwards for the next two days".
"Narain has done a very good job in his return to F1," said Toni Cuquerella, the team's chief race and test engineer. "He has worked in the car systems and has been familiarizing with the new tyres. The collected data will be really helpful to carry over to the new F111".
To check out our Valencia Tuesday gallery, click here.