10/03/2011
NEWS STORY
Sergio Perez, who topped the timesheets on Tuesday but subsequently had his time disallowed for cutting a chicane, made no such mistakes today, posting the best time seen at the Circuit de Catalunya so far this year.
Conditions were ideal with bright sunshine throughout the day, though the air temperature never got any higher than 18 degrees C and the track temperature peaked at 27 degrees.
The Swiss team had a full programme planned for its Mexican rookie, with set up work in the morning followed by a qualifying simulation before the lunch break and a race simulation in the afternoon.
However, while the qualifying simulation - the first ever for the C30 and the Mexican driver first one for the F1 rookie driver - went well, the race simulation was interrupted after only six laps due to a powertrain problem and resumed about an hour later.
"We have had an interesting day," said James Key, the team's technical director, "as we carried out qualifying practice and race simulation. In the morning we started off with some general set up work, and then went into a qualifying practice, which was the first time we had run the car on low fuel. This was also the first time for Sergio to go through all those procedures from Q1 to Q3. He did a good and controlled set of laps, setting a time of 1:22.042 minutes on soft tyres and 1:21.761 on the super soft compound.
"In the afternoon we started a race simulation," he continued, "but unfortunately this was stopped early due to a KERS problem, which meant we could not complete the laps we wanted."
"We did a lot of useful preparation work for the first race weekend," added Perez. "Although we could not complete the race simulation because of a technical problem, for me it was an interesting and positive programme. It was my last day of testing. I feel ready and I can't wait to race!"
On his final day of testing prior to the start of the season, Felipe Massa tackled a busy programme, focussing mainly on a comparison of various aerodynamic elements, before moving on to a simulation of a race weekend.
"These two days of testing were very important and the outcome is good," said the Brazilian. "We introduced a lot of new components on the 150° Italia and their effect was clear to see: there's more downforce and therefore, even the tyres were working better, even if their level of degradation is still significant. Today, we did a race simulation and the car also worked well in this situation. I don't know where we are compared to the others because we just concentrated on ourselves."
After seven days of testing, Massa tried to predict what sort of scenario might begin to emerge in Melbourne: "I think that qualifying will still be important, but the race will be very different to last year. I expect a lot of pit stops, as can be seen from the fact that today I did four and it will be important to manage the tyres very carefully, even in qualifying. Strategy will become even more important, that's for sure. I myself feel more confident, because to have more grip on the first flying lap is vital for me and I think that my style of driving is well suited to these tyres, whereas last year I struggled a lot because the tyres, especially the fronts, were very hard."
Mark Webber completed his preparations for the season-opening Grand Prix in Melbourne with another trouble-free outing. The Australian completed 97 laps on his way to posting the third best time of the day, albeit 0.705s off Perez' pace.
"We had a good day again," he said. "The car was reliable, so hopefully the weather will stay dry tomorrow and then rain on Saturday, so we get a good week out of it!
"I feel I'm ready for the first race now and while, of course you want a good run at your home race, I don't want to jinx with it any forecasts," he added. "In terms of team preparation, it's the best we've ever had going into the first part of a season in terms of reliability. All the departments have done a sensational job in getting every aspect ready. Hopefully, we're not too far from our main rivals to start with and we'll just go from there."
"It's been a good week so far, with no major difficulties," added the team's head of race engineering, Ian Morgan. "The weather helped us out a bit as well. With track temperatures near 30 degrees, it was nice to finally get a bit of running in the kind of conditions we may see at some European races. All in all, a successful day and I think Mark's now pretty comfortable with everything. He has a good feel for the car and how the tyres work, which is more important than ever this season.
"Tomorrow, it will be Seb's turn to complete his pre-season work. We'll run through a similar programme to today and, as with Mark, try to get him as comfortable as possible with everything before we pack up for Australia."
It was an altogether better day for Williams - which had Rubens Barrichello on duty - but no entirely problem free, the team suffering a failure fifteen minutes from the end of the session. This followed another problem that ocurred just before the lunch break.
"After completing some checks and mapping work with the new aero package, we went through a range of mechanical set-ups," explained Sam Michael.
"We're seeing some quite positive signs and we're heading in a good direction," he added. "We did have a failure on a very high mileage, rear suspension component late in the afternoon, so we're analysing the data on that now."
"We had two aims today," said Barrichello, "to work on new tyre runs and to carry out some long runs. The new updates on the car seem to have made the car more consistent, and I was happy with our long run pace compared to last week. There's still some work to be done to improve our performance on the first lap on new tyres."
At Mercedes, Michael Schumacher was in action, the German enjoying what he described "very productive day" as he got his first taste of some of the team's upgrades for the opening race of the season.
The German spent the morning completing set-up work with longer runs towards the end of the session, while the afternoon saw shorter runs focusing on data collection in preparation for the final two days of the test.
"We've had a very productive day and completed a reasonable amount of mileage," he said. "We were able to check and confirm a lot of things on the set-up of the car with the new upgrade package, and my initial impressions are certainly positive. We've worked hard on reliability at the previous tests and our priority now is to develop and fine-tune the car which we have done quite successfully today."
Having recovered from his cold, Nick Heidfeld shared driving duties with Vitaly Petrov for the Lotus Renault GP team. The Russian, who ran in the morning, lost track time due to a KERS problem, consequently, between them they only managed 56 laps.
That said, data collected on the braking system suggests the new components tried this morning are working as expected, while set-up work with a heavy fuel load also proved valuable.
"Unfortunately we lost some time this morning because we had a problem with the KERS so we couldn't do the longs runs we had planned," said Petrov. "For the rest of the morning we did some brake work and continued getting more data on the tyres."
"We spent the afternoon trying some different ideas with the set-up," added Heidfeld, "and we made quite a few improvements and learned some useful things. I ran on the medium and the soft tyres, and the car felt much better by the end of the day, but there is still a lot more work to complete before the last day of testing tomorrow."
It was a difficult day for Lotus which had both Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli on duty. Due to a gearbox problem, the Italian, who was on duty this morning, only completed 6 timed laps however, his Finnish teammate was able to complete 40 in the afternoon.
"Obviously it's a bit frustrating that the gearbox issue cut short my time on track this morning," said Trulli, "but we've now got some time back in the factory to fix the problems so I'm looking forward to heading to Australia and begin the fight with the midfield teams."
"It was a pretty good afternoon for me," added Kovalainen. "Jarno had some problems this morning with one of those things that's hard to predict but the team managed to get it sorted for the afternoon and we were able to work through the whole plan. I can feel it coming together well - we'll sort out the reliability and I think we are just where we want to be.
"A difficult morning for Jarno with the gearbox change," admitted Mike Gascoyne. "We had put a new 'box on overnight but saw a problem with it this morning so had to change it during the session. Unfortunately a water leak then meant that Jarno was not able to complete any real running, but this afternoon we made some real progress with Heikki. He was able to work through a program on the tyre options and the blown diffuser so after a tricky morning it was a very positive end to the day."
Adrian Sutil took over from Paul di Resta for Force India, working again through a full race weekend simulation, starting with qualifying sim in the morning and a full race distance in the afternoon. The team also used the running to test some new aerodynamic parts.
"We carried on where Paul finished yesterday," said the German, "running through our race weekend programme. The race simulation worked well in the afternoon including live pit stops and a safety car exercise to cover a few different scenarios that can happen during Grands Prix. The balance was generally OK, we identified some areas of performance where we can gain time and I'm looking forward to working on these tomorrow when I'm back in the car for the morning."
"The VJM04 covered a good mileage again today," added Dominic Harlow, "as Adrian carried out a race simulation together with some aerodynamic and set-up tests. The race team were also present again for live pitstop practice before the first race. We have a busy final day of testing ahead tomorrow as we look to complete the maximum preparation possible in this pre-season."
Jaime Alguersuari had his first day at the wheel this week, the Spaniard evaluating some new aero components. He did mainly long runs to assess the reliability of the new parts, as well as carrying out a half-race simulation in the afternoon and some set-up work on the STR6.
"The warmer track temperature was definitely useful for the teams and for Pirelli, in terms of preparing for Melbourne," said chief engineer, Laurent Mekies. "Also bearing in mind that the season gets underway soon, we have carried out a lot of pit stop practice runs, as clearly this will be a key element during races this season. In fact, over the past two days, we have completed a total of sixty pit stops."
At Force India, Jerome D'Ambrosio spent the day putting plenty of mileage on the MVR-02 whilst evaluating the Pirelli tyres, optimising set-up and proving out new parts for the first race in two weeks' time. Of the 11 teams that were taking part today Virgin (on 96) ended the day with the fifth highest number of laps under their belts.
Aside from a late morning fuel pressure problem, which was quickly rectified, the team had a trouble-free day which yielded plenty of very useful data to be fed straight back into the car development programme.
The team was delighted to welcome Timo Glock back today. Although he is unable to drive the car whilst still recovering from his appendectomy, he spent the day trackside poring over the data and observing the track activity of his and the other teams to ensure he is as up to speed as possible.
"Today we have had a much more positive day," said d'Ambrosio, "and it was great to get so many laps in and complete our programme. This is the second full race simulation I have completed now and having this opportunity to do four full days before the start of the season is very important. Tomorrow will be another exciting day for me and then we will have a good picture of where we are. It was also great to see Timo back today."
"We have had a very productive day of running today," added John Booth, "culminating in another positive race simulation programme using the tyre compounds we will run in Australia. As a result we have some excellent data to work with over the next couple of weeks to ensure we are in the best possible shape for the first race. Timo was with us for the day today and is on the mend and in great shape. It was good that he had the opportunity to be as close to the cockpit as possible - both in the garage with the team and observing the action from the pit wall."
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