11/02/2011
NEWS STORY
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Michael Schumacher topped the timesheets on the second day of testing at Jerez, the German completing 112 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:20.352.
Running with the Mercedes KERS operational throughout the day to continue the German's familiarisation process, the team focused on system checks with shorter runs in the early part of the day, before progressing to set-up work and tyre evaluations with the medium and super soft tyre compounds over longer runs.
"It clearly was a productive day, and obviously I am happy about that," said Schumacher. "We were focusing on long runs and being able to produce a lot of mileage is positive in terms of reliability. It also gives us good data for the test days to come and for the developments we are working on. We are moving forward as we should during the testing period but at the same time, we are aware we have to keep pushing."
It was another good day for Felipe Massa and Ferrari, the Brazilian putting another 116 laps on the F150(th Italia) as the Italian team spent the morning analysing the behaviour of the four types of tyre brought here by Pirelli, while in the afternoon it was all about longer runs. According to the team, all the planned work was completed and it now falls to the engineers to analyse the mass of data gathered.
"On both days, I was always able to complete the programme we had planned," said Massa. "Today, we tried all four types of tyre and were able to acquire a lot of data. There is a lot of work to do before understanding the behaviour of the tyres and then to find the right set-up on the car.
"The times?" he continued, "it is always better to perform well, even if it does not mean much. From here to the first race, a lot will change, on our car and on those of the others.
"After just a few days of testing it really is impossible to say where we are compared to the others. We are trying to concentrate on our own job, without worrying about what our rivals are up to. The important thing is to understand in which direction we must go and how to solve our problems. The first race in Bahrain is still a very long way off.
"We have to try and understand the handling of the car as well as possible," he continued, "but clearly, when it comes to the rear wing, we still don't know how it will work in an overtaking situation," said Felipe. "So, it is important to have a reliable car to make the most of the time available."
Referring to today's pace-setter, his former teammate, the Brazilian said: "Well… it's not exactly a novelty for him to be in that position, given everything he has won in his career."
Jenson Button was on duty for McLaren, the Englishman getting his first run in the MP4-26 which was launched exactly one week ago. The morning was largely spent acclimatising to the new car, finding a perfect fit and making small improvements to driver ergonomics and comfort.
After another lunchtime strip-down, the engineers began a more concerted programme of running in the afternoon - albeit one punctuated by several lengthy red-flag stoppages.
At the end of the day, the team evaluated a number of further set-up changes, leaving Button - like Hamilton yesterday - feeling positive about the car's potential. These changes will be further pursued when he is back on duty on Sunday.
"The morning was spent getting me satisfactorily fitted in the car, adapting to the hybrid - which is new to me - and getting used to how the system works," said Button. "I like the power boost it gives you. I felt a lot more comfortable with the car at the end of the day after we'd played around with a few things in the cockpit. We've made some good progress.
"We've tried the different Pirelli tyres," he continued, "there are big differences across the compound range; not only in terms of lap time, but also with degradation and durability. It's going to be fun for racing, I think, and it's what everyone wanted. The TV viewers will certainly know the differences between the tyres.
"It's been a good first day," he concluded. "On Sunday, I hope we can start to have a crack at seeing what the car really has in it."
Having taken over from Daniel Ricciardo yesterday afternoon, Jaime Alguersuari had the car to himself today. The good weather continued, allowing the Italian team to work through a programme which featured three key elements; tyre evaluation, weight distribution and car set-up work.
"After another day and a half in the car here, following on from last week in Valencia, I feel we have made progress in terms of our understanding of the Pirelli tyres, which was one of our main targets this week," said the Spaniard. "I tried all compounds except the supersoft here and I had a good feeling from the car with all of them, getting an idea of their different behaviour. I also made progress in terms of using the KERS and the DRS which to be honest, does not look as complicated as I expected it to be.
"The important thing is that we are making progress every time I go out of the garage," he continued. "In performance terms, it is still a bit too early to start drawing conclusions, especially as the lap times here vary a lot from the morning to the afternoon, but I am reasonably confident that this side of the car's progress is on the right track. Of course, there is still a lot of work to do, but now Buemi will drive for another two days, so I expect to find even more improvements when I get back in the car in Barcelona next week."
Mark Webber was at the wheel of the RB7 again, completing 113 laps as the world champions completed their planned programme.
"The car ran very well and we're continuing to learn," said the Australian. "It's very early days at the moment in terms of performance and there's a long way to go before the first race, but we've got some good mileage in, which is important."
"We continued to evaluate the new Pirelli tyres today," added the team's head of race engineering, Ian Morgan, "as well as testing some new aerodynamic components and development parts. It was a productive day; we concentrated on long runs and completed our programme. We've had good reliability and Mark's had a solid two days in the car."
Adrian Sutil continued to put the miles on the new VJM04 for Force India. On its second day of testing the German completed 73 laps with a best time of 1:21.780, thereby finishing sixth quickest.
With a good foundation set-up established yesterday, Sutil evaluated the different tyre compounds available before moving onto more performance work in the afternoon. The car ran reliably throughout the day, allowing the team to push on with its programme for the week. Sutil hands over to Paul di Resta for his first-ever laps in the VJM04 tomorrow.
"Today was really the start of testing for us as yesterday was principally a shakedown to make sure the systems all worked correctly," said Sutil. "It went well, with a lot of laps completed. The car has a good balance and I think for the first real day of running we did a reasonable lap time. We had a reoccurrence of yesterday's problems with the floor and we know what the issue is, but to get a permanent fix we'll have to go back to the factory. I'm already looking forward to seeing how it goes in Barcelona with the KERS and the moveable rear wing, which should both give some extra performance."
"A productive second day with the VJM04," added circuit engineering director, Dominic Harlow, "with Adrian running all the available tyre compounds, carrying out some aerodynamic tests and just starting to look at setup of the car. There were no major reliability issues aside from a couple of sensors. That is encouraging, also good to see was a general improvement in lap time as we started to understand the car better despite the circuit probably dropping off a bit this afternoon. Paul will get his first opportunity to drive the car tomorrow and will pickup the programme where we left off this afternoon.
Sauber's day was brought to an early close when Sergio Perez crashed at Turn 7. "I'm fine but I feel sorry for the team, and especially the mechanics," said the Mexican. "I lost the rear in turn seven and we obviously lost working time. I hope the rest of the test will be good for the team and Kamui, and they cover a lot of mileage. For me it was another day during which I have learnt a lot. "
"Generally it was going fine today," said technical director James Key, "but unfortunately Sergio had an off in the afternoon. He lost the rear end when he was on hard tyres, but these things happen and are part of the learning process.
"Overall Sergio made a good step forward," he continued. "He settled in pretty quickly and gave us a lot of useful information. It was a busy day up to the accident. We have tested chassis set-up directions and were cycling through a number of set-up scans on the car and with the tyres to get further mechanical directions. After we only used three sets of tyres yesterday, we were able to use new sets more often this morning. We did a run through from the hard to the super soft Pirelli compounds. We had no warm up issues with the medium and hard compounds, but we believe we should get more out of the softer ones. Compounds, however, will change. We have checked the car after the incident and have found nothing wrong with it. We will be ready to continue tomorrow."
It was Timo Glock's second and final day at Jerez, the German completing 57 laps as he continued familiarising himself with the new car. The Russian team deployed its new moveable rear wing for the first time today, so the focus of the programme was understanding the car's behaviour with it.
"Today I was able to spend more time in the car and complete more laps than yesterday," said Glock, "so we are making steady progress at this early stage with the new car. We tested the moveable rear wing for the first time and it will be interesting to use during the races this season. I leave Jerez with a good feeling and now I can't wait to jump in the car again next week in Barcelona."
"Today we completed another 57 laps which provides us with more valuable information," added John Booth. It was very useful to run the car with the moveable wing operational for the first time. Timo has done a very good job in the car over the past two days and we are quickly understanding the MVR-02. We look forward to two more positive days of running and to feeding this information back into the development programme to ensure we maintain our current momentum."
Vital Petrov continued for Lotus Renault GP, as the British team focussed, like its rivals on tyres. According to the team, there are no problems with warm-up of the hard tyre compound, which it ran for the first time today. Degradation levels looked reasonable, while the team was able to complete some "useful mapping work" optimising its KERS system in conjunction with its braking system.
"We were not worried about the lap times and instead we focussed on the tyres to try and understand how they work," said Petrov. "We also did some aero mapping in the morning and then spent a lot of time working on the brakes and the KERS.
"Unfortunately we lost some time with a water leak, which meant we could not do the race distance in the afternoon as we planned. After three days in the R31, I'm only just starting to feel really comfortable with the car and it was in the last two hours of the session that we found some good things with the set-up."
"Our second day in Jerez was not the easiest because we suffered with some minor technical problems," revealed Eric Boullier. "However, we still managed reasonable mileage and we have ticked off some more items on the job list. In particular, the work we did on the brakes and the KERS has been very beneficial and we are learning how to get the most from the system. For tomorrow, Nick Heidfeld will get his opportunity in the car and this will give us the chance for a detailed evaluation before we make any decisions."
"We started the day with a continuation of our aero work in the morning and carried out some constant speed runs down the straight," added Alan Permane. "The focus then switched to our tyre programme and working on the brakes and KERS. Unfortunately we were plagued by a water leak for much of the day, which limited our running and meant we did not have the chance to complete a race distance. The issue has now been resolved."
It was another frustrating day for Williams, Pastor Maldonado crashing out at Turn 4 just over an hour before the end of the session having lost track time in the morning with a KERS problem.
"Today started well," said Sam Michael, "then late morning we had a warning message on the KERS battery. That required us to strip the battery to check if there was a problem or if we just had a sensor error - fortunately it was the latter. It cost us 3½ hours though. Despite that, we made some really useful progress understanding the car's aero characteristics with the setup changes we ran in the morning. We started this afternoon with a long run but went off at T4, the high speed left hander."
"Yesterday we were aero testing so weren't focusing too much on out right lap times," added Maldonado. "This morning we covered good mileage testing different things on the car. After a bit of time in the garage so the team could check the KERS, I went back out later this afternoon. We were just starting a race simulation when a couple of laps in I lost the car at T4 which put me out for the rest of the day."
Jarno Trulli completed just 40 laps in the Lotus T128 before a mechanical fault brought the team's programme to a close at 13:13. Although not a serious issue, the team didn't have the relevant parts to hand and as a consequence it is waiting for parts to arrive from its factory.
"The morning went well for us," said Trulli. "We managed to do a decent number of laps and put in a couple of quite long runs but then we had to stop with a mechanical issue which could not be fixed in time for me to go out again today. I would have liked to have had more running today but this is all part of testing a brand new car - we need to iron out the problems now so when the races start we have ironed out all the problems. Hopefully Heikki can put in some decent mileage over the next couple of days and really start to push the development of the car."
"We had a promising start to the day," added Dieter Gass, the team's sporting director. "We found some interesting results from the setup work we did and have continued to learn more about the Pirelli tyres and how to maximise their grip levels on the car. Overnight we were able to fix the issues we had yesterday but unfortunately we had a mechanical problem at the front of the car that we were not able to fix in time today, but the spare parts we need are arriving from the factory tonight so we will be in good shape for Heikki to get into the car tomorrow."
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