01/03/2012
NEWS STORY
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Despite withdrawing from last week's test, Lotus was straight back on the pace at Barcelona today, Romain Grosjean edging out Jenson Button and Sergio Perez to top the timesheets.
"Our main target for today was to compress as much set-up work as we could into the first day as we are playing catch-up relative to our rivals at this track," said Lotus technical director, James Allison. "Of course, we want to complete as many laps as possible, but this second objective is inevitably compromised somewhat by needing to make many short runs punctuated by set-up changes."
"Obviously, we're very pleased to complete the day without any major difficulties to the car after such a troubled start here last week," he added
"The car was feeling very good and it's great to bounce back from our dramas to set the fastest time of the day," said Grosjean. "It's clear we have solved the problem we encountered and now we have to complete a very full test programme this week.
"The feeling in the team is fantastic," he added, "it's like last week's issues never happened. My crew told me that the problems would make us stronger, and this is true. The chassis is stronger, and all the team is stronger. We gathered good data today and we have a few interesting things that we would like to confirm tomorrow which should help us make a good step forwards."
McLaren, which had Jenson Button on duty, is planning on gradually introducing a number of new components during this test however, the focus for the opening two days is primarily pit-stop practice with a full race crew and further race 'prove-outs' including set-up work. The back-end of the test will be spent focusing on analysing and learning about the aerodynamic package for Melbourne.
"Having completed more than 2000km at Barcelona last week, today was always going to be more about quality than quantity," said team manager, David Redding. "We wanted to drill a little deeper into our understanding of the car, and that meant undertaking some bigger set-up changes that wouldn't ordinarily be available to us during a grand prix weekend. We made good progress and we're satisfied with today's results."
It was another productive day for Sauber, Sergio Perez completing 118 laps as the Swiss outfit focussed on evaluating new aero components and mechanical set-up work. In the morning the Mexican was on short runs before switching to longer ones in the afternoon. Over the course of the day he only used the medium and hard tyres.
"I think this was a very good day for me," said Perez. "The car was performing well under varying conditions. We are working in the right direction, and I'm very much looking forward to getting into the car again for my final day of testing on Saturday."
"We are quite happy with how the day went," added, Giampaolo Dall'Ara, the team's head of track engineering. "We ticked off everything that had been on today's job list without any noteworthy issues. It was also good for Sergio to cover a good amount of mileage. Test conditions here in Barcelona have been ideal. Among the hard and medium compound tyres used today we had two sets of medium which were prototype tyres from Pirelli."
At Red Bull, Mark Webber enjoyed a faultless day and was able to get through the full planned programme, the Australian completing 102 laps on his way to posting the fourth best time.
"We're here at the last test now, it's starting to build up for the first race and we're pretty excited for that," said the Australian. "However, we still have plenty to go through this week but so far so good.
"We certainly have a few more boxes to tick," he continued. "We have some crucial data to gather this week and the next three days will be really important. We're learning every run and we are making progress I think.
"There are so many things to consider when we have a condensed winter programme like this. You need to get your priorities right and concentrate on those. That's where experience comes in and we have plenty of that. It's going well so far but there aren't enough hours in the day at the moment, though I'm sure we're not the only team feeling that."
"We had a good run, with no reliability issues at all, so overall a very successful day," added Ciaron Pilbeam, Webber's engineer. "We spent the morning working through short runs and in the afternoon we did some longer runs, doing performance work. When you get through the full programme without problems there's not much to say beyond that it was a good day."
At Mercedes, Nico Rosberg focused on set-up evaluations with the F1 W03in the morning, while his afternoon programme saw longer runs with further set-up work aimed at optimising race performance
"I'm very happy with the first day of our test programme," said the German. "We were able to complete a lot of laps and tried a few different things which worked out well. Some of the evaluations were really interesting which makes the day good fun for me, and it's nice to find out what the car can do. We had no reliability problems which is good as it's important to get mileage on the car. We are making progress, but we don't know really where we are compared to the others. It will be interesting to find out at the first race."
Once again, it was Jean-Eric Vergne in the cockpit of the STR7, the Faenza outfit's programme centred on car set-up work, in contrast to last week, when evaluating components was the key element on the agenda.
The programme was split between short and long runs, with the car running trouble-free throughout. With the French driver being new to the routines of F1, the team also carried out numerous pit stops. Tomorrow, the Frenchman will concentrate on race simulation work.
"It was a good day and I completed more laps than on any of my other times in the car so far," said Vergne. "I am feeling more confident and comfortable and I think we are also making steady progress on car development. The pit stops are also getting better and were an improvement on last week here."
Paul di Resta was back on duty for Force India, the Scot completing 98 laps on his way to posting the seventh best time of the day.
"Our second week in Barcelona has got off to a good start," said chief engineer, Jakob Andreasen, "with another reliable day of running. Paul covered just shy of 100 laps and worked through the programme without any significant issues. The priority was to shakedown the second chassis, which we ran for the first time today, and that went smoothly with no issues to report. As the first race in Melbourne approaches, there are more developments arriving at the track and our task this week is to evaluate as much as we can. The first of those were on the car today, so we carried out some aero passes and had some encouraging feedback from Paul."
"We managed to tick off all the objectives once again," added di Resta. "The final test is all about adding new parts to the car, seeing how they perform, and getting our set-up sorted for Melbourne. I think we have a good idea of where we need to be based on the performance of the car today and Nico will continue with that work tomorrow. As I said last week, we are definitely making progress in terms of performance and we're getting a good understanding for the new 2012 tyre constructions."
Felipe Massa worked set-up in the morning before switching to long distance runs in the afternoon, the Brazilian completing a total of 105 laps.
After last week's disappointment, things were a lot better today for Caterham, where Vitaly Petrov replaced Heikki Kovalainen, who is thought to be suffering from food poisoning. The Russian was the second busiest driver out there, completing 123 laps.
"Today the car was working very well from the first installation lap and right up to the final lap this afternoon," said Petrov. "We managed to work through the whole tyre program and put in solid lap times all day, as well as working through a number of other setup programs that are helping me find the right balance I can really push with. My race seat will be in the car for Sunday so I think we can make more progress then, when I know I'll be fully comfortable in the car, so I hope we can build on what we have done today over the next couple of days and leave the test in very good shape for the first race."
"That was an excellent day for us," added Mike Gascoyne, "despite the very late change of driver we had to make this morning. We ran 123 laps and completed the whole program and even though we will not have Vitaly's race seat ready until he is back in the car on Sunday, he was much more comfortable in the car and improved his times and his feedback throughout the day.
"This morning we were focusing on further tyre evaluation and setup work," he continued, "and in the afternoon session we completed a number of long runs which has helped us take a step forward with the setup options for this car. Taking into account the number of laps we ran today, and the fact Vitaly is feeling ever more comfortable with the team and in the car I think we can say that this has been the perfect start to the test for the whole team."
Pastor Maldonado drove the Williams FW34, the Venezuelan mainly carrying out aero correlation tests and set-up work. A couple of technical issues however, meant the team completed just 58 laps on a day its rivals each averaged over one hundred.
"We tested part of our first race update package today," said Mark Gillan, "in particular the new front wing. We then tested a number of interesting exploratory mechanical set-ups to investigate potential development directions for the forthcoming races. During the day, we encountered a couple of issues which limited our running and which we are currently investigating."
"We didn't complete as much running as we would have liked," admitted Maldonado, "but we still gathered some good data. This morning we ran our new front wing so we will analyse the results from our aero runs this evening. We completed a few longer runs during the afternoon as we investigated a number of set-up directions."
Check out our Thursday gallery, here. More pictures to follow.