23/02/2012
NEWS STORY
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Williams Pastor Maldonado posted the quickest time of the day on the penultimate day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, the Venezuelan setting his best time on the Pirelli super-soft rubber.
The 2010 GP2 champion, like most of his rivals, posted his best time in the morning session, with only Paul di Resta managing to improve in the afternoon.
"It was a good day today, as we completed all of our planned programme with no issues," said the Venezuelan. "We have put more mileage on the car which is great for everyone here and back at the factory as we now have a lot more data to analyse. The car is progressing well and I feel everything is going in the right direction.
"It has been a very pleasing day," added Mark Gillan, "with Pastor successfully completing his whole run plan, covering 106 trouble-free laps. We started with some aerodynamic correlation runs, followed by race weekend preparation and set-up optimisation. In the background, we also ran some bodywork cooling sweeps throughout the day.
Second quickest, and probably a better barometer of real pace, was Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes WO3. The German, completed 127 laps running on the soft and hard compounds as he worked his way through the planned test programme. In the afternoon the German completed the first full race simulation for the new car, including live pit stops
"I'm very happy with the race simulation that we ran this afternoon," said Schumacher. "It confirmed what we have seen from the first tests with our new car, and that we don't seem to have any big issues with reliability.
"The small things from the last two days I would rate as typical testing issues," he added. "So from my side, I am happy with our first full testing session, and we have definitely improved our game which is what we wanted to achieve. To what extent, we can only see later, but I am finishing with a positive feeling."
Kamui Kobayashi was back at the wheel of the Sauber C31 for what the Swiss outfit described as a "a straightforward test day", with no noteworthy problems but a "programme that excites engineers rather than fans".
The Japanese driver, who completed 99 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:23.582, mostly carried out set-up and aero work, including a comparison between two different rear wings.
"It was my first day of driving the new car here in Barcelona, and it was a good one," he said at the end of the session. "We had no noteworthy problems all day and went through a lot of test items. I can feel we have made some progress compared to the test in Jerez. But, of course, we have a lot more work to do and there is room for improvement."
"We have had a straightforward day," added head of track engineering, Giampaolo Dall'Ara. "Kamui did almost a hundred laps. His programme was mainly about improving and confirming what we understand about the car. For example we were looking for improvements in the front tyre warm-up, evaluating different aero parts and ran different suspension configurations. The programme required a lot of five to ten lap runs. It was a productive day for Kamui and the team. Tomorrow's test programme tends to become a bit more exciting, and that is also for the outside world."
At McLaren, Jenson Button's first day in the cockpit at Barcelona very much mirrored the programme completed by Lewis Hamilton yesterday. Button spent the morning exploring variations in set-up over a number of shorter runs and then moved on to a full race-distance simulation in the afternoon.
"We've done a lot of reliability work over the past three days," said Button, "more than 100 laps on each day. Most of that has been longer runs, getting used to the feeling of the car over a long-run and set-up work for the longer runs.
"We've also been really working hard to understand this year's Pirelli tyres and getting the car to work efficiently around them. That's a key part of the programme this winter.
"There are a lot of cars out there that look competitive: so we'll keep pushing," he added. "We should hopefully bring our upgrade package to the next test and that will see us through to the first race in Melbourne."
Jean-Eric Vergne took over driving duties at Toro Rosso for the last two days of the test, the French youngster enjoying a trouble free day. The Faenza outfit's programme was a mix of set-up evaluation and working in race conditions, as it was its first test of the year with the full race team carrying out the pit stop practice. This was important as it is an area where the team aims to improve for the coming season. With higher temperatures than at the Jerez test and the past two days in Barcelona, conditions were approaching those encountered during the season, which provided useful data regarding tyre management and car cooling.
"It's good to be back in the car after Jerez," said Vergne. "We got through a lot of work today, including some aero evaluation and different set-ups. We ran all day long on the Medium tyres, which gives us a good baseline to analyse the data. We are learning more about our new car with every lap and it has performed well on this Barcelona track which is always a true test of how a car is performing. Towards the end of the day, I had my first experience of proper Formula 1 pit stops. It was a scary feeling at the beginning, coming in at 100 km/h and seeing so many people. At first, I was worried about hitting someone, but by the end I had got used to it. It's an exciting experience!"
Two drivers posted identical times today, Felipe Massa and Mark Webber, however, as the Brazilian posted his first he gets the honour of finishing sixth quickest today rather than seventh.
Massa continued with the programme of car development and data acquisition relating to the behaviour of the F2012, which Fernando Alonso begun on Tuesday. The Brazilian driver got through all the key elements of the planned programme, completing a total of 84 laps, nearly all of them on the hard tyres. At the end of the session, he carried out a fuel scavenge test and stopped at the end of the pit lane.
"The car is definitely better compared to Jerez," said the Brazilian, "and we are beginning to define how we must move forward to continue to improve. I ran all the time on the hardest tyres and I am reasonably pleased with the work we did.
"Tomorrow, I will try the other compounds and we will work on fine tuning the car. It will be important to do a lot of kilometres over these final five days to be as well prepared as possible for the first race of the season."
After yesterday's full race simulation for Sebastian Vettel, today it was turn of teammate Mark Webber. After starting his programme however, the car developed a fault which interrupted the morning, but after lunch the Australian went into the full race simulation and managed the full distance without further problem.
"All in all, it wasn't a bad day at all," said Webber. "Not the smoothest of morning's and we didn't get too many laps done there, but in the afternoon the race simulation went OK. We're still learning plenty.
"It would have been nice to have done a few more laps," he continued, "but I think everyone always wants to get 20 or 30 more and, even with the problem this morning, there were loads of positives to look at. We're a very ambitious team, so we'll keep working on that."
"Mark only got a handful of laps in before we had a problem with the gearbox," added Ian Morgan, the Austrian outfit's head of race engineering. "But whereas it didn't set us back too much yesterday, today needed more time.
"Mark then went out for his race simulation this afternoon a bit cold, but he managed to put a whole race distance on and the gearbox ran flawlessly. We stopped a couple of laps earlier than planned because we saw something in the data, but in the end it was nothing. So, while we had a limited morning, the afternoon was a pretty good recovery.
"These two days of race simulations have been valuable too in that we've got some good information on the tyres."
After Nico Hulkenberg topped the timesheets on Wednesday for Force India, today saw Paul di Resta in the white, orange and green car, the Scot completing 83 laps on his way to posting the eighth best time.
"Quite an intense day and a very busy afternoon," said di Resta, "but the main thing is that we achieved the objectives for the day. There will be a lot of analysing tonight to see what we can learn, especially trying to understand the data from the long runs this afternoon. Once we've been through the numbers, it should give us a direction for tomorrow. As I said in Jerez, it's nice to have a car with such a good baseline because it makes it easier to experiment with the set-up and that's what we're trying to do at the moment."
"After the install lap we went straight into the aero programme with some sweeps around the front of the car," added chief engineer, Jakob Andreasen. "We lost some time with a bodywork issue late in the morning, but the afternoon proved more productive and we made up for the time we lost with a revised programme. We ran with the hard and medium compound tyres and completed the short and long runs we had planned, whilst also making numerous changes to the mechanical and aero balance of the car. It was an excellent effort from the team at the track to come away with all the long run data we needed and that has set us up nicely for our final day of work tomorrow."
Timo Glock was in the hot seat at Marussia, the German running through a detailed programme of tyre evaluation work, putting the full spectrum of compounds through their paces over short and long runs.
The car's excellent reliability was underlined for a third consecutive day as Glock completed 108 laps in total to end the day ninth out of the ten runners, maximising his one-day programme here this week.
"It's good to be back on track again after the long winter break and to start our preparations for the new season," he said. "Although we are still using the old car it has been really useful to work through the tyre evaluation programme and have the team working together again trackside. I'm looking forward to driving the new car now."
"It's great to see Timo back in the car and in such fine form," added John Booth. "It is clear he has been working very hard over the extended winter break and I don't think I've seen him quite as prepared as this. We've achieved some good results today evaluating all the specifications of tyres, which will give us good background information going into the season. Timo also completed some tyre-specific set-up work which will feed into the new car programme. Overall another rewarding day of testing."
It was a tough day for Vitaly Petrov and Caterham, the Russian losing valuable track time due to a number of unrelated issues.
"We spent quite a bit more time today looking at various areas of the car to help me find a setup I'm really comfortable with and can push on from," said the Russian. "Once we'd sorted out this morning's issue we were able to try a few different setup options in the afternoon and by the last couple of runs I think we were heading in the right direction, both mechanically and with the different tyre compounds."
"That was a bit of a difficult day," added sporting director, Steve Nielsen. "We struggled to give Vitaly the sort of setup he wants. He did a good job today to drive around a couple of basic issues we knew we would encounter, but those will be solved with new parts that are coming for the next test, and they should not affect Heikki tomorrow. We have saved a number of tyres up for tomorrow and that means we can run through the whole tyre program we had set for the last day of this test which means we should leave here with a better understanding of how the 2012 compounds behave and decent amount of data we can use to prepare for next week's test."
"This was one of the tougher days we have had this winter," admitted Riad Asmat, Caterham Group CEO, "but we will learn a good deal from today. This morning we had a front suspension problem that we worked hard to fix and the solution meant we were able to lap consistently this afternoon. That sets us up better for tomorrow when Heikki's back in the car and we are catching up with the plan for this week, so more hard work tonight and a clear day tomorrow and we should be able to achieve the targets for this test when the session ends tomorrow."
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